Monsters on Milk Cartons: Where Is Our History of Horror & Who Is Writing It Now?

Once upon a time, when the Horror genre was at war with the Literary Critic over whether any Horror was ever Literature, essays, reviews and opinions abounded. Everyone got in on the act – from writers like Poe and Lovecraft, to pulp writers and editors and reviewers.  Their commentaries and essays often appeared in genre magazines, anthologies, and in the front and back matter of novels, anthologies, and classic reprints. Horror lovers had opinions, and they argued them passionately.

Horror, like the Science Fiction and Fantasy genres, had very articulate “experts” and defenders; we were a sentient genre. But ever since the 1980’s Slasher end to the 1970’s Horror Boom, we seem to have lost our voice. In fact if it were not for Critic Harold Bloom’s attacks on Stephen King, there would have been an even more alarming radio silence since then.

What happened? Where is our genre narrative? And why in the age of “communication” and social media, is there less conversation? Why is there no apparent documentation of our history?

In fact…where IS our history?

http://ninapaley.com/Portfolio/Nina6B.htm

The Inevitable Identity Crisis

It may be unpalatable to some, but one reason we have lost cohesion in the genre is because we have gained the interest of Literary Critics. In other words, we have proven just enough of our genre argument that Horror does descend from and occasionally revert to Literature that we “won” the war. However now the Hard Stuff begins. Now the Critic is asking questions we have no one willing or prepared to answer.

The problem is that the Literary Critic is asking questions we didn’t even know we had ourselves. We have been left alone so long to stew in our imaginative juices that we never stopped to think that maybe our own ideas about Horror were just our own and no one else’s. We had our own concepts of what tropes were and should be, of what conventions were required or self-eliminating, or what formula existed or did not; but there were no real, firm rules written down anywhere. We had writer’s beliefs, public opinion, and editorial preferences.

We have been our own authority for so long, it never occurred to us that we had no authority — just opinions. But now the Critic comes along asking what should be simple-to-answer questions. And they are turning out to be not-so-simple.

Questions are essential to the Critical purpose of recognizing our genre. To be clear, they do not establish what the Horror genre is defined by; they detect patterns.

Critics then are looking at what our editors, publishers, and writers have called Horror through the years. They are plumbing the depths of our print history looking for the bread crumbs that tell them what we think Horror is. Then from that, they will look for Literature…

This does not mean that pulp would be excluded as a sort of waste product; rather it would find itself relegated to a subgenre defined by strict and predictable formula. It would exclude itself from Literature, but not from the genre itself. But it does mean that all of our writing will have to be measured against an agreed-upon criteria, and some of us will not find the works we think we should find as the apple of the Critic’s eye…

What the simple beginnings of this process has done is to rightly shine a light on our genre’s internal conversation – which seems to have almost completely stopped or been stopped. And make no mistake, we are all stumped at the absence of words.

Our history is nowhere to be found at the moment. Our commentators are not commenting. At the precise moment when we have the Literary Critic’s long-awaited attention, we have no one to respond to it. And this is as alarming as it is embarrassing.

The reason for this silence is multi-fold, but the effects of it have been nothing less than devastating, because for the bulk of our historical record destruction, we can thank the internet. Nothing is turning out as promised. And the erasure of the old system of traditional publishing is having a crippling effect on our genre — precisely because of our years of battle. It absolutely does not help that the internet wooed us into certain false beliefs about how immortal all writing would become — how accessible…

For example, we have long had it preached to us that the internet would open all doors and that people of similar minds would find each other and unite, and wondrous alliances would form and knowledge would spill forth into and all over the universe.

It didn’t.

In fact, all it did do was kill print – the very medium in which the bulk of Horror lives, and the exact place documentation of our entire history was placed for safekeeping. Print, you see, was believed to be the medium that would last long after most if not all of humanity perished.

Since around 3400 BC, we have been collecting writing as a species. So the rise of Amazon and the virulent attack on the hard copy medium of all of the Arts, the open invitation to theft of intellectual property was certainly on nobody’s radar. But the Tech Revolution has made it a point of its rise to obliterate Art as a living for Artists, and in that process, everything our genre produced in writing in the very public battle of that Critic versus the Genre War has been all but lost.

This has been a devastating blow to the genre. And from the current trajectory of technology, we may be losing literally everything we have worked centuries for.

You think I am kidding about where we nested our history? Go here https://www.amazon.com/Classic-Horror-Collection-H-P-Lovecraft/dp/1788285387/ref=asc_df_1788285387/ and read the introduction…

Our History in Reprints

In the Horror genre, we have always had dedicated fans. And for us, our most vocal writers and editors independently kept the flame of defending our genre’s Literary integrity alive for decades. We did it in print, and relied on its immortality in reprints.

People get to know each other by reading their words. Oral tradition becomes written tradition. And through that process, we all get to see where we fit in, where we have come from, and what our predecessors were thinking.

But we also through print get to peek through the window of time to see where we have come as cultures and societies. This means that essays included in the front of those books often say as much about our changing values as they do about Literature or individual writers’ lives. But it also means we sometimes have the privilege to discover lost or hidden gems in details about certain publications, publishers, editors or writers; we get to see the unvarnished history of the genre…

In Horror, we had begun to assimilate and collect our own history because no one – especially not the Literary Critic – was doing it. There was a strong sense of torch-passing, of keeping the words and opinions of our own greatest writers alive. There were those who collected the good stuff and saw to it that our most influential writers were reprinted often with or within the genre Classics – the ones that were so indisputably Horror and so probably Literature that we wanted to educate new initiates to the genre. Along with those works came the arguments for their defense – either Literarily, or simply for the pleasure of their existence.

Editors came to play a big part in this, primarily because they oversaw the genre during the publishing boom that happened from the 1950s to the 1980s. They were in perfect position to have opinions and gain battlefield experience and expertise, and so they wrote about it.

For anyone who wants to “read” the history of the Horror genre, you need to find old magazines and old reprints of Horror books and read the front matter – the prefaces and introductions and forewords written by our genre experts. In those you will witness not only what Horror was doing in every decade, but what writers and editors felt about the definitions and directions the genre seemed headed in. You will find essays on classic writers, including hard-to-find details about writer biographies and publication history, battles with Critics and editors, opinions about formula, conventions and terminology.

This peculiar way of documenting our history was oddly what the internet was supposed to be about…everyday fans and genre Establishment discussing the genre…

And because print lives in a world where reprints also live, even if you missed a great essay, chances were it would be reprinted enough times elsewhere than the original publication that the everyday fan could find it…eventually. Now, however, the silence on our historical journey is deafening.

With the single exceptions of editors Stephen Jones and Ellen Datlow, no single editor is being published in print regularly enough to establish those historical breadcrumbs. No one.

And I absolutely bristle when anyone in the Establishment says we can of course have access to our own history through the internet.

Take editor Paula Guran as the most horrific modern example. One of our genre’s finest editors and one who will historically go down as one of our century’s most prominent editors as well, Guran once produced email Horror newsletter Dark Echo “for horror writers and others”… http://paulaguran.com/about/ This was not only well-received by the Establishment, but was touted as one of the finest publications in the genre; I personally visited its pages on the net frequently. And I never would have guessed based on the mythology that I would one day not have it as a reference. Well, the day came.

Within those pages, Guran often discussed pertinent changes happening in the genre – living history…It was part of the literal pulse of the genre. And now that it is no longer in production, you cannot retrieve it on the internet. Period.

ALL OF THAT INFORMATION IS LOST. GONE. IRRETRIEVABLE.

Guran, an undisputed contributing authority on an important period of our genre, has been silenced – first because the what’s-on-the-internet-lives-forever myth really was a myth, and because the internet’s evisceration of print has led to the loss of yet another regularly employed editor in the genre: her. (And when the genre is willing to lose its Number Three editor – Number Two in the U.S. – then Houston, we have a problem.)

We are fast approaching an unsustainable new fiction-breeding population: less than two established editors in a genre equates to homogeny in that genre. And that is a direct result of the Tech Revolution’s plan to end print… which is starting to suspiciously look like a plan to end a lot of writing and writers along with it.

But there is another problem – the problem that ending the print industry means an end to the collecting of those previous and historical works (let alone modern ones), and an end to accessibility through availability, and the established cycle of reprints.

Not only can we not get reprints of older historically-relevant essays, but we cannot get what was printed (or internet generated) a decade ago.

How long are we going to put up with this?

Why is the solution someone else’s problem?

And where the hell is our Establishment? Rubbing their hands in glee anticipating a total takeover of the genre from the inside out?

It certainly feels like it.

I will say it again: our complete history exists in the front and back matter of countless, previously published books. NO ONE has collected them all in one place. NO ONE has sat down to collate the information into one or more volumes so that real Horror fans and writers who want to be educated within the genre can at least self-educate.

And what about future editors?

Does no one think that what has transpired over this tumultuous three decades of internet intrusion deserves documentation?

Really?

If all we have are MFA programs that despise genre writing, and virtually no print magazines, and limited markets for new and upcoming writers, and one remaining reputable and traditionally trained/established editor, and an elitist professional organization… How exactly are we to prevent uneducated-in-the-genre-history editors from misguiding the genre? How do we stop what will most certainly become ignorance?

With the loss of print, we have lost not only paying jobs in the genre, and training grounds in the genre for editors and writers, but we have lost the collective memory of our history.

How then can we also possibly help the Critic help us?

More importantly, how do we keep Horror on life-support until a real plan shakes out?

 Critics and Comic Books

This is what the internet has reduced us to:

One freaking editor still working in this country who knows her stuff.

And no one is saying anything. Are you kidding me?

It seems right now that the only passionate people who give a flying **** about the genre are comic book/graphic novel writers and our one single official Literary Critic – S.T. Joshi. And while we have “people” doing what is being called Literary Criticism – as in the case of Jeff Vandermeer – keep in mind the field of Literary Criticism is not the field of criticizing Literature, but a Ph.D. level educational credential.  (Vandermeer does awesome critical work but I do not yet see the credential behind his name, so can recommend him as an awesome essayist but not as a Literary Critic.) There is also real Literary Critic and writer China Mievielle, but at this time I am unaware of any published Critical work by him (which I fervently hope he will change soon), and can only point to a few front matter works by him, which are impressive and worth the read.

Go here   https://www.amazon.com/At-Mountains-Madness-Definitive-Classics-ebook/dp/B000FCK5US/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=mountains+of+madness+mieville&qid=1567428014&s=books&sr=1-1-catcorr#reader_B000FCK5US    to read his fantastic Critical essay on Lovecraft.

Comic books and graphic novels is where a lot of writers and opinionated fans have retreated. Perhaps it is because of this age’s reliance on the visual, or perhaps it is because these subgenres of Horror have always been underrated and a bit rogue. Campy and rich with pulp, they represent the roots of our genre in a unique way, and within their own worlds, they may well be living and holding the hidden history of the genre right now. But if you are looking for “official” history, you will have a hard time cumulating it in the here-today-gone-tomorrow Print On Demand environment of our hide-and-seek world of the internet.

You are, I think, better served to look to the Critics. And in this case, our one Critic.

S.T. Joshi, once a writer in the genre himself, has taken it upon himself to try to do some of the heavy lifting in getting Horror established as a Literary genre. He has begun not only looking for the history of the genre and the works and writers that make up that history, but has begun the much harder conversation of defining the genre…

What is Horror? And is “Horror” the right name for the genre?

He has begun looking for terminology, to come up with a common lexicon so there is absolutely no confusion about what is meant when Critics and others sit down to talk genre shop.

There was a time when we would have had “people” to engage in this conversation. But either they are not out there, or the internet has made darn sure they cannot be found.

This is a problem. And I am sure that not even a Literary Critic believes that his or her singular voice should be the only voice in a discussion.

But right now, Joshi is the only one consistently publishing his continuing analysis of the genre, and he is a bit handicapped, because being human, he has preferences and aversions. He is, at least, uniquely honest about them as he sets about his mission to establish definitions and ground rules for the genre. And as such, we are privy to some very revealing internal discussions he is being forced to have with himself, and the opportunity for fans and writers of the genre to learn something valuable about the genre and Literary Criticism is priceless.

I recommend Joshi highly, because whether you agree with him or not, he is helping the genre understand not only Literature, but its own role in it. He is inadvertently speaking TO us as a genre, showing us how Criticism works and why it needs from us what it needs.

He helps us see the reasoning Critics use to determine Literature, and in doing so helps us to look at our own writing and works differently – in such a way that we can either say we don’t write Literature and don’t want to, or that we would like to try our hand at it and therefore how to get into the mud with it.

Either way, he is educating us about how Literature and Critics work — how they think. What we do with it and how we argue and debate about it can and should be informed by just this type of academic writing structured for the layman.

So here are his works that you need to read and force yourself to read completely (whether you agree with him or not) because IF you don’t agree, learn what he (a Critic) needs to hear back from you on why or why not. If you don’t speak his language, and he does not speak ours, then we are just yelling at each other.

 

What To Do About Our History Amnesia

The most important thing a fan can take away from this is that Horror as a genre has had many growing pains and has had many people that stood up to document those pains. We have a written history that is splashed all over the front matter of books we cannot get or find anymore.

But there are people. We still have “people.”

And our history was never intentionally lost but deviously and unceremoniously erased by the Tech Revolution fallout.

We need to set about reacquiring it, republishing it, and making it available to novice writers, editors and new fans.

I recommend reading the essays of Lovecraft and Poe where ever you can find them. But I also recommend reading essays by Stephen King, and S.T. Joshi (who admittedly dislikes his writing). I recommend reading anything written in front matter by editors Ellen Datlow, Paula Guran, Jeff Vandermeer, Stephen Jones, and occasional editor British Literary Critic China Mieville. And anything written by writers like Ramsey Campbell, Robert Bloch, Clive Barker, Neil Gaiman, Ray Bradbury, and Joyce Carol Oates are also vital to the ongoing discussion of our history.

For “documentation” of the genre’s ongoing history, I strongly recommend the Mammoth Book series of Best New Horror (an annual publication of international repute). Currently edited by British editor Stephen Jones, the voluminous front matter includes the Year in Horror summation with genre news, new and defunct publications, industry changes and effects, books, movies and anthologies published/produced, awards and obituaries. Read it and you will be fully “up to speed” on the year.

Because this is all that remains of our historical narrative…

And if we don’t do something definitive and soon, we are going to be lost to another kind of history.

It’s time to start reconstruction. It’s time to start working with Literary Critics. It’s time we starting talking to each other as a genre again… It’s time to be monstrous.

https://www.amazon.com/Lunarable-License-Monsters-Parenthood-Aluminum/dp/B078J5YV7V

Late-Breaking, Horror-Shaking News: Editor Paula Guran Inches Toward Retirement

If you don’t know who Paua Guran is, you aren’t reading enough Horror…

Guran has been one of the three major contemporary editorial contributors to the genre, most recognized for her excellent work on the Prime Books annual “Best of ” collection, The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy and Horror, but also for her prolific work on countless anthologies that for decades have served up some of the more interesting and innovative Horror anthologies – often with a delicious side of Dark Fantasy and fairy tale influence.

She is, by far, my favorite American Horror editor. And in times when it is increasingly hard to get our hands on British Horror, her collections have offered a complimentary creative contrast to Ellen Datlow, whose influence continues to showcase better constructed Horror with Literary inclinations, but without that feel of adventure. Guran has been the “heart” of the genre, going for the emotional center.

In her latest annual Best collection for 2018—her forty fifth anthology – she announces in the About the Editor note that “after more than a decade of full-time editing, she’s now freelancing..” having downsized her life and her work to more relaxed levels with “mixed feelings.” (Year’s 511)

She is not alone in those feelings… American Horror is taking a hit.

And I have one thing to say:

Noooooooooooooooo!!!!!

Say It Isn’t So…

The rise of the anthology in Horror fiction has done several very important things: it has provided a forum not unlike early Horror magazines in which readers have a chance to “discover” writers they could not find anywhere else, to “discover” new writers in the genre, and to get a feel for what Horror writers are writing about. But they also have provided a unique opportunity to understand what the field of editing is all about – not the sweat and grit of proof-reading or slush-pile skiing, but the kind of work editors used to do – back when they discovered writers and nurtured them a bit, guiding them into other publishing and awards territory – in essence, contributing to the genre an editorial style – not so much as a star-maker, but as a representative of chosen stories, subgenres, and “accent”…

In the Olden Days, readers read books curated by certain editors. Editors had fan-bases. We seem to have lost that connection with editors. And it is a shame.

Datlow, I think, will always be underestimated by readers for the work she has done for the genre – because her anthologies carry less obvious “voice” and because of her own preference for what I see as literary artistry. But Guran will be equally obviously missed for the solid sense of presence and voice in her selections. Where Datlow to me represents refined technique, Guran is just plain fun. With Datlow, I see something of the intended editorial future of the genre; with Guran I see the pulp roots of yesteryear bleeding through. Between them both, we had a fine balancing act doling out tradition and inspiring different aspects of our Horror future.

Now it feels like the wheels are coming off…

We are losing a highly representative voice of “accessible” and “achievable” Horror goals, leaving some of us to feel we are being refined right out of our own genre.

Guran has been around the genre for some time…quietly rattling the cages of some pretty awesome beasts. According to http://paulaguran.com/about/:

“In an earlier life she produced DarkEcho, a weekly email newsletter for horror writers and others, for over six years (1994-2001) and was recognized with two unprecedented back-to-back Bram Stoker Awards for Nonfiction from the Horror Writers Association (1998 and 1999) as well as an International Horror Guild Award (1999) and a World Fantasy nomination (1997). She began producing the horror portion of the pioneering professional Web publication OMNI Online in 1996 and became the Literature Editor of Universal Studios’ HorrorOnline in October 1998. (Many of the now-outdated interviews, articles, and reviews she produced from 1995-2006 are archived on DarkEcho website—which she will, someday, cleanup and sort out—she hopes.)”

Do you realize what an awesome resume that is? All before she became the Senior Editor for Prime Books…

Yet there is more to Guran’s impact upon the Horror genre.

Ultimately, a major part of her legacy-in-progress will be her own contribution to the “shading” and gender-blending of Horror. She has been integral along with Datlow in the decisive attempt to bring more diversity to the ranks of published authors. Between the two of them, we see far more women being published and being awarded in the genre, far more minority voices, helping to eradicate that myth that only white males write great Horror.

But we have so much farther to go… I hope Guran has an understudy…. somewhere out there…

Someone who will rise in the genre to become the kind of editor she has been – one with eyes in the back of her head and at least one of them focused sharply on the future.

But editing is not something that publishers seem interested in grooming. They seem product-focused, not genre-focused… seeking what sells, not what shapes.

And our educational system is conducting itself in very similar ways. Editing tends to be one course in all of the university writing or classics undergraduate major courses, too-often about nonfiction, and it often isn’t required. No one talks about how to edit fiction. No one teaches it. No one really writes about it.

In fact, the only way one can learn it is by teaching oneself – reading other writers’ work, reading how-to’s written for writers on how to “fix” flawed fiction, reading essays on the emotional and etheric experience of editing. Nothing is out there offering a blow-by-blow instruction or introduction. And there are just not enough established and reputable publications out there who will hire an editor-wannabe for the purpose of mentoring into a powerhouse editor of a single genre.

This is slipshod and irresponsible. And it is all we have. The field of editing has become crowded with MFA folk who know no more about editing than I do, who are also writers who would rather be writing than editing, who “fall into” editing opportunities without any particular credentials or training, and often who appear to be some kind of network hire, a “connected” person instead of a proven editorial savant.

How can we get great editors if we are treating them the same way we are treating writers in our genre? Staring out over an open field of wildflowers with a glassy-eyed shrug, and deciding to judge only those who make it into a special-delivered vase on our desk?

We need editors who are trained….Like it needs to be its own DEGREE…. supported by study in classic Literature, Literary Criticism, and training in Craft.

We also need more flexibility in how academics look at the genres. Sure, genre writing is rarely Literary. But that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be capably executed or that its editors should not be very well-read in the genre they intend to edit.

Between training writers and training editors in mechanical basics and academic Criticism in and around the foundation of Classic Literature – how can we help but grow a few Literary writers and better readers? How can we miss creating better editors who create better books, which create better sales and better Publishers?

Eclectic is Good. And It is Necessary.

As much as an editor like Datlow is to be appreciated, editors like Paula Guran become beloved. The only predictable thing in her anthologies is the unpredictable… There will be tales that are offbeat, unique in protagonist or setting… clear roots to the better traditions of Horror no matter how campy or Literary. And that is important.

Eclectic is good.

Eclectic is necessary.

And we cannot let our Establishment ever forget that, because in the rush to Literary style we have started to lose some serious essence.

It has often felt as though in our genre we are so focused on elevating our Craft, of impressing dead Literary Critics that we are totally forgetting the fan out there – the reader of Horror who wants some fun along with that technique, who wants more than anything to be scared – if only for a moment.

Everything in Horror does not have to be perfect.

Perfection is what we aspire to…It is for the Poes and Lovecrafts among us… even if those unknown writers are outside the field of current favoritism, as Poe and Lovecraft once were.

We cannot and should not denigrate writers of lesser genre fiction – those reckless storytellers of urban myth and trite, overused plots, nor those writers whose voices speak from outside our comfortable norm. From those places we might just see a writer take off on jets of inspiration and innovation. And it is those writers who need to read the work of other chance-takers. It is those writers who need to feel the recoil when the patterns of poor technique or overdone plots become obvious – but like with new and would-be editors – who can’t if they don’t read enough of all of that lesser-regarded writing for creative comparison to the Greats of the genre – past, present, or future…

This is what an editor like Guran offers: diversity from the roots up: from who is writing to what is being written about…

For example, in the 2018 Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror are works and writers such as  “Welcome to Your Authentic Indian Experience” by Rebecca Roanhorse, a Pueblo/African American Writer…”The Lamentation of Their Women” by Kai Ashante Wilson, African American writer, “Little Digs” by Lisa L. Hannett, Australian National Science Fiction Award Winner…”Moon, and Memory, and Muchness” by Katherine Vaz, a Portuguese- American writer. This is genre diversity long over-due.

Guran’s anthologies remind me of the old Weekly Readers we used to get in elementary school – along with the book selections at the end that shaped the reading I do today. Her work is that “box of chocolates”… in no way the “Best” of Horror as much as it is the Year’s Great Horror Stories… Tales to inspire, to unsettle, to tease…

I slipped into a funk when I read Paula Guran’s note about pulling back from her editorial proliference… Now what will I do? I thought….maybe I should go back and collect the anthologies I missed that she edited… prolong the withdrawal a little longer…

I realize she is still working… at reduced volume, at reduced pace…

But I think this is a canary -in- the-coal-mine moment for Horror…

We need to do something, because how long we have Datlow is another pending question….And then what?

What, Horror gods, will we do to stop the editorial hemorrhaging? Because great editors are as rare as great writers: they deserve discovery and mentoring… They deserve educating.

How do we fix this without making an actual effort to do so? And how do we look our fans in the eye if we just stand around blowing up inflatable monsters instead of making a decisive effort to properly seat our genre at the academic table at just the moment when Literary Critics are beginning their work to define and establish our genre as the legitimate Literary entity we have all long known it is?

Paula Guran is scooching toward retirement. Fans like me are screaming into pillows. We better do something…before we lose everything we have worked for…

We better start caring about how great editors are made. Because I know we have other editors editing out there, but we all come with expiration dates. And for fans like me, they will never be Paula Guran.

 

“Interested in writing and/or editing? Here’s a link to a unique Editors’ Roundtable that features general and specific comments on a promising story from some of the most respected editors in the field: Paula Guran, Ellen Datlow, Gardner Dozois, Liz Gorinsky, James Patrick Kelly, Nick Mamatas, Ann VanderMeer, and Sheila Williams.” http://paulaguran.com/

 

 

The Future of Horror: Will You Be There For the Renaissance?

For those who might have noticed the strange and mysterious “disappearance” of Horror titles currently missing from American bookshelves…Might there be cause for worry?

Even in big box stores that formerly carried at least The Best Of series of Horror anthologies (edited respectively by Ellen Datlow, Paula Guran, and Stephen Jones), there appears to be a growing availability desert.

Sure, they can be ordered online. But what has happened to carrying at least those titles in major bookstores (titles, by the way, which always sold copies)? Where are our new authors? Our old, established authors? Why are we constantly seeing reconfigurations of the same authors and stories? What are they doing to our genre?

For many, there is the sensation that the future is bleak. Has the genre fallen on hard times, or are we being gaslighted into oblivion? Are Horror fans still out there, and what can we do as writers to try to bring things back to better sales plateaus?

The truth is that Horror as a genre is reinventing itself. And that means the real question is not are fans and new writers out there, but will you be part of the Renaissance?

Masks of the Internet

One issue we are dealing with in our genre is the problem of the Internet. That’s right – problem.

Today’s internet control of Literature is like going into your local library and finding everything dumped on the floor. The only thing anyone tells you is that it is in the heap…somewhere.

While too many people are proud to say this type of availability puts everyone for the first time on equal footing, it also makes a mess that is overwhelming to navigate. Expecting the average reader to have the patience to sort through all of the possible titles and an army of unknown names as authors or editors is just too much. Never mind the issue of quality in Craft as well as production.

We need the kind of categorization that came with the thousands of years of development shaped by libraries, the kind of reviews that come from average folks that used to be employed by newspapers to rate or recommend new publications, the kind of analytical criticisms that come from actual Literary Critics, and the word of your local bookseller who knows what is selling and what is not.

All of these are being erased by Amazon and its shoppers. So for those still “using” the knowledge provided by libraries and brick and mortar stores to make online purchases, get ready. Your secret weapons are being eliminated. Prices are going up, selection is going down, and nobody knows or cares what you know or spend precious money on.

So go ahead. Wave your phone in my face and tell me how my job is soon to be extinct because my company won’t price match. I can’t wait when you get to pay new, higher prices because Amazon has you over the barrel…

The examples of what is to come are already out there.

It is far too easy to make books look totally awesome that are absolute crap.

Here is a for-instance: I recently bought a not-so-cheap Print-on-Demand book about navigating the “basics” of one of the Adobe suite programs….But instead of an introduction to that program, it was a hundred-page recitation of what you find on the box…system requirements, et al…

Talk about nerve. And if this kind of thing happens enough times, readers will stop buying books off the Internet. Justifiably. They will stop trusting us as writers.

So what can we do? How do we find Horror and keep our genre going in these hard times?

For one thing, we need to keep up with our editors.

It really doesn’t matter if you like an editor’s choices and/or selections of authors or stories. What matters is that these are “considered” The Best….

As a reader, you need to see what that is to see if you agree or disagree with the assessment. And if you disagree, you need to support other, different authors. If you agree, you need to look up those authors’ other works and give them a whirl. As a writer, you need to know what has been done, what strikes you as overdone, and what inspires you to do something completely different.

You cannot know if you are a rebel if you don’t know the norm…

Know the norm. Know the editors. Know their styles. And either get with their program or write your own. But read them. Read them regularly… They aren’t who they are for no reason…

The other thing you can do is to try other publications, other anthologies, other editors. They are out there, although in increasingly smaller, more irregularly published numbers. They do have a habit of disappearing frequently, of reinventing, of staggered publication schedules. But if you do not purchase them, they cannot survive.

And try the offerings of small, independent publishers.

Horror is still more of a red-haired stepchild than its own powerful genre for many publishers, and all of that bruhaha about this being a Golden Age of Horror really does pertain mostly to film. As for print and Horror fiction in general, there is evidence of trying to stuff Horror into other genres like Fantasy, Science Fiction, and Thrillers. Mention of Horror tends to be an afterthought, not the leading marketing angle.

And the sad thing is this is all the doing of publishers trying to rebrand our genre as everything else, as though to hide its wolfish nature amongst the sheep is a good thing…

We have writers – many of them from that Golden Decade of the 1980s and the Real Golden Age of the 1950s – whose works are still out there being read often because they are being recycled... But it would appear that the general consensus is that we are not at this time writing very compelling Horror fiction. And some of those “older” writers used to be proud Horror writers…until something ugly happened and they were sidelined by publishers who shied away from midlist sales figures and potentially controversial prose if not controversial writers. And then until something uglier happened and someone started bleeding off our writers claiming they wrote other types of fiction instead of a “purer” kind of Horror.

You didn’t know there was classism in our genre? Well, there is in fact…

But the good news is that along with the sweeping (and often detrimental changes) the internet has brought to our genre the opportunity for coup.

You see it is the fans of Horror who decide what Horror is and will become.

Fans decide with their wallets.

When I see more pulp, more comics, more graphic novels selling in our genre than the Best Of anthologies, I see revelation.

When I see classic authors outselling everyone but Stephen King, I see revelation.

When I see Stephen King carrying our modern genre, I see revelation.

The revelation is: you can lead a horse to water or a pulp fan to Literature, but you cannot make him or her drink.

And if a fan does not understand Literature, chances are, there is no incentive to drink more than once.

In other words, we as a genre – our Establishment – is doing a piss poor job of marketing the reinvention of Horror. We are not exclusively Literary, nor should we be. We have to love the whole child. And what better source of inspiration is there but pulp? Graphic Art? Fine Art? Comics? Summer blockbusters?

That is what is selling…

Horror is a fun genre as well as a heavy one. One end feeds off of the other.

Our Renaissance cannot exclude our pulp roots, or demand an explanationless manifestation of Literature because we are not (yet) robots.

Our Renaissance is destined to be a marriage of the two. Opposites attract. Sparks make fire.

We are as writers being presented with one “acceptable” track of creation, and that is in itself stifling.

If we want to “see publication” then we must conform to demand.

How ugly is that?

As a fan, if you want to know where your genre is, it is out here – with you – in the cold, wet rain. Writers are writing in rebellion. But we have few places to go to show you, unless we want to “give it away” and we cannot afford that.

We are seeking markets. Making markets. Trying to decide how we can navigate the world between the hammer-strokes of Amazon.

Your genre is reinventing itself, therefore it is being forced to hide its unpalatable gyrations, its shape-changing behind internet masks – lest it bring shame to the Establishment.

But it is out there. Graphic novels, comics, pulp… its audience is loyal. It sticks together and whispers about new plots, new characters, new writers, new artists….Not so much general Horror fiction.

But in their loyalty to King, we see their preferences…the need for accessibility in fiction. As writers we are trying to get there. We are writing stories nobody wants to pay for, but may in fact be good Horror. We support King, read King, and will always have a special place in our creative hearts for his work. He (in all likelihood) inspired multiple generations to become writers if not lifelong Horror fans.

Yet we need more.

We need variety to keep on growing. We can’t all write pulp, or Literature, or Kinglike books.

But we can be inspired by them, and that is how genres grow.

The Way Forward is Dark

One of the reasons we are having trouble selling our Horror fiction (besides the obvious obliteration of markets and reduction of publishers and editors) is that we are all not looking in the right place OR for the right things.

Like it or not, this is the era of attempted Literary Horror…and not because editors and Critics want it, but because the world we live in right now is presenting us with Horrors the likes of which only George Orwell, Isaac Asimov and Harry Harrison imagined.

From this decade we will either see the rise of some of the greatest Literature of our modern times, or the end of it. Because all of us are being affected down to the molecules of our day-to-day lives. We cannot escape or ignore truths any more than Dickens or Dostoevsky. And the fear, the fury, the moral outrage is coursing through our creative veins, coloring our monsters and our plots, dragging us into dystopian scenarios, making real the rest of the world in ways the rest of the world has only dreamed of.

Every day we are waking up in a universe created by Bosch.

Every day, the garden of earthly delights becomes less and less attainable… replaced by the promise of man’s inhumanity to man.

Climbing up out of that hellish, all-encompassing vision is difficult. For artists and writers who are prone to so much psychic noise and psychological sound waves, the experience can be overwhelming….suffocating….and sometimes liberating…

Literature and Fine Art is born of this angst, this disgust and this Horror.

This means that a lot of writers are either writing about Potteresque young wizards or drowning in creative milieus of powerful emotion, struggling to get it down on the page and tucked neatly into story.

But they are OUT there…struggling to the surface for air. Keep looking for them; they are looking for you…

The transformation from trying to figure out what editors want and whether a story is one story or a trilogy has evaporated into how to bring the Horror to the foreground, how to make Horror scary again when Real Life seems to outpace anything we can imagine.

This is a creative challenge.

And like our fanbase in the genre, we are struggling to navigate each day, pay the bills, digest each new oppressive threat by politics that seem hellbent on creating dictatorship by promising various, construed bases changes won’t adversely affect them but only those they do not like….all while pushing plots and experimenting with characters and scenarios that often feel as surreal as Science Fiction or Fantasy because real life is mimicking it.

It is a tall order. But one I assure you your genre writers are up to…And I have seen the evidence personally. Right now what we are lacking most is that over-the-edge push…the one thing that horrifies absolutely the way a King novel horrifies, because the Horror is real… It is because we are struggling to learn the Craft we are not being taught while creating what we hope are sound concepts executed the way we want…

It takes work. Practice. Mastery.

It takes Renaissance.

And we cannot let ourselves go numb and mute. We have to say exactly what we mean. We have to not-care what others will think. We have to be willing to write outside of the Establishment’s dictates or preferences, and understand getting found in a confusing mass of titles is going to be a challenge unlike few others.

It’s going to take raw determination by our writers.

It’s going to take blind faith.

And as a writer I feel it coming.

As a bookseller I still see fans looking for new Horror.

This tells me it isn’t over – our genre is far from done.

In fact, I believe it tells me we are just getting started. And once we find a way to get it out there – as a genre – as a collective….then I think we will see new sales. New fans. New writers.

Whether we are The Best or not.

Some of us are content to place our immortality in the hands of our readers. Because that is where it belongs. Out there. In the dark.

Scandal at the HWA: How Big is Too Big?

It may seem peculiar, but I go long periods ignoring the Horror Writers Association.

It’s not really a big mystery: I don’t belong to the Horror Writers Association, and I confess, I have no professional interest in it.

While some may say it is because I have not been professionally invited (not having sold the “easy to achieve” $25 in professional sales – a statement, by the way, I contest and protest), it is more than that. After years of watching the HWA, I grew to dislike the cachet of the association.

And after a recent attempt to visit the HWA website to “see what’s doing” among the “Professionals” (a somewhat annual task I perform and one which typically leads to my quick exit with an eye-rolling angst), I discovered that scandal – yes scandal – was brewing. Had brewed. For the last two decades.

And I missed it. The question is: should you?

 

What’s On YOUR Resume?

Now, it is important to note than any organization with the sheer numbers of membership and length of existence as the Horror Writers Association and which manages its history without a major public scandal is doing pretty darn well.

And it is also important to state that any organization of this breadth and depth is also the mirror of every other governmental entity it is fashioned after – responding to insinuations or outright accusations with denial, defensiveness and eventual action. Typically, such an organization seems to move at glacial speed when immediate speed would be better for all. And perhaps that is why the scandal (as it were) took wing at all.

Then again, important accusations were made.

And if you are a writer whose goals include becoming a member of the illustrious HWA, or if you proudly already include it on your resume, perhaps you should make yourself aware of the observations of malcontents and decide for yourself. Because if you are a writer, you should not only have principles, but stand by them. And if you join an organization, any hint of scandal or complicity becomes all yours by association.

As a writer, critical thinking goes with the territory.

This means you take nothing for granted – especially the more sensational something is rumored to be. However it also means being aware that one is responsible for one’s own decisions, and that sometimes those decisions carry consequence.

There was, in April of 2016, an eye-opening post from established writer and Bram Stoker Award winner Brian Keene titled, “Why and When I Will Begin Boycotting the HWA (UPDATED x3)” at http://www.briankeene.com/2016/04/13/why-and-when-i-will-begin-boycotting-the-hwa/

I was astounded to find a legitimate laundry list of unsavory allegations with regard to the operations of the HWA since the early 1990’s.

In this case, the scandal is really about an observed and disturbing pattern of behavior noticed by some members who objected strenuously enough to them to distance themselves permanently from the HWA.

And while some might call them “mere” allegations, these allegations are no joking matter.

They include allegations of embezzlement, and assertions of inaccuracies and inconsistencies in prestigious award nominations, as well as those which include abuses of trust, the breaking of organization by-laws, exposure of the membership directory to a known stalker, and adulterated awards voting process, missed office elections, and more (according to a blog post by author Brian Keener). And they are – to some folks – serious enough in mere allegation form to warrant not only disappointment, but to generate real professional differences in what is acceptable, forgivable, and even forgettable.

I am thinking the HWA should be adult enough to handle that, and would wish dissenting members well in their departures. And then perhaps would also take a serious look at how the ivory castle might be viewed by outsiders looking in…at least for the sake of the future and its future members. And while officers of the HWA did respond to the allegations AND the post, one cannot help but also feel a bit underwhelmed.

http://beforeitsnews.com/alternative/2018/02/trey-gowdy-says-adam-schiff-obstructed-justice-in-attempts-to-block-courts-from-releasing-fusion-gps-3592352.html

 

There inherently remains a professionally imposed chasm… a qualifying of complaints, as though only “approved” peers of the HWA might have legitimate opinions, or may voice concerns. It is that ever-present sense of superiority that clings to the HWA which is not only hypnotic, but strangely repellent.

For example, as an occasional visitor and potential member, I have always felt “dismissed” by the organization’s public face, a consequence of that persistent and elitist tone. Whether the HWA is right for the genre or for other people, I cannot say. I can only say it is clearly not right for ME. Keene’s observations only confirmed the existence of ghosts I whose presence always seemed to loom large behind the professional tone of the organization.

These are not ghosts which should be exorcised with denial. Rather, they should be met with apologies, and revised procedures, with real attempts to mend fences.

So I find Keene’s comments vitally important –especially to writers like myself who (for whatever reason we are not widely published at the moment) are left feeling uncomfortable at best with our impressions of the HWA.

Says Keene of his catalog of allegations: “The list is to demonstrate that somewhere along the line, the train came off the tracks and it has remained there, regardless of which administration is in power. I stand by my assertion that it is important to list these, as it demonstrates a pattern. And as Jeff VanderMeer said on my public Facebook page, ‘ I’ve had nothing to do with HWA for more than 15 years because of the pattern.’ The pattern is the entire point.”

I mean if our patterns of being unpublished writers matter…

Sometimes an organization becomes too big to save. The question is: is the HWA there yet?

Sometimes such an organization becomes everything it claims to warn and fight against. And when that happens, leaders within that organization have only themselves and their own hubris to blame.

And then in November 2017, there rose the spectre of the sexual harassment dismissal of a prominent writer/editor discussed in the post of blog File 770 titled “Horror Writers Association Bans CA Suleiman from StokerCon” authored by Mike Glyer at http://file770.com/?p=38766

As a female writer of Horror, this comes as no real surprise, but a real disappointment… and yet another item to join Keene’s list of HWA public relations  and image problems.

And while the HWA has taken steps to correct the trajectory of such damaging allegations, they are a large organization and large organizations typically wake up late and under-achieve repairs in their attempts to be fair but litigiously aware.

For many, it just feels like too little, too late.

In self-defense mode, they do not see what outsiders see.

We have in this latest “scandal” an oblique- though-Science Fiction writer’s view of an HWA casting couch. One has to wonder, how long has that been there. But then, don’t we all really know?

Isn’t the lack of the elevation of women writers in our canon and the almost total lack of writers of color tell that tale?

Having prestigious female editors – no matter how accomplished – does not make up for that, and I will tell you why: if female writers or writers of color cannot get published in the handful of “acceptable,” HWA-approved,  sometimes-appearing-in-literal-print magazines, they do not get paid that “easy to achieve” $25 minimum in sales to warrant membership in the HWA, which in turn limits further acceptance in publications, which in turn limits nominations to or acceptance by HWA-sponsored or infused awards, or Best Of publications.

The drowning of real voice continues. The banishment of dissent is complete.

And if the officers of the HWA are slow to rise, or are inadequate in their rising to act on such patterns, such accusations, such scandal…doesn’t that in itself suggest that the HWA has perhaps made itself obsolete?

I would hope not. There should be something salvageable in a noble purpose…

No, I would hope that it is all about wariness of legal reprisals.

But for the world it looks like too much tolerating of an obnoxious and unwelcome relative at the holiday gathering. It looks, smells, and tastes like complicity.

And it looks like arrogance.

 

https://www.tumblr.com/search/nuclear%20wars

The HWA & the Future of Horror: What’s In It For You?

I want to make clear I am not seeking to participate in the “bashing “of the HWA, but I do agree with many of its critics that we all need to be paying attention here, because they have the reputation of representing the entire genre.

I think the idea behind the formation of the HWA was not only honorable, it was timely. And I do think that in their own way and at least initially with good intentions, the HWA has thought itself to be the best bet for the genre to offer a guiding hand if not a guiding light as to how the genre can grow itself, sustain itself, and monitor itself.

However I also think that power corrupts, and that the bigger a group gets, the harder it is to truly vouch for the reputations and honor behind its members and their actions. I do think it is possible for such a group to become too large to be serviceable to its original mission statement, and I do think the capacity for ego-led behavior to become self-endorsed increases the more exclusive and elitist the group makes itself.

The HWA was founded by writer Robert R. McCammon in 1984, a writer of the 1980’s boom times who had the foresight to see the genre needed a sense of direction.

Precisely at this time, Literary Critics were starting to founder under the weight of the 1970’s explosion in publishing of all genres and the internal discussion of the inadequacies of either Literary Critical Theory, contemporary writers, or both. The ability of Critics to help guide professional direction of national writers was simply overwhelmed. The capacity of the public to “weigh in” on a book’s popular value and potentially its quality had begun to erode the very concept of an “establishment’s” authority.

For those reasons, the HWA was needed as a mitigating source of information and recognition.

But with the onset of the Internet Age, the bomb-throwing began, and the victims are not only publishers, editors, Critics, booksellers, and writers – it is also those organizations like the HWA that are taking it in the teeth.

The simple fact of the mere size of the organization that may be a contributing factor to its undermining by scandal. But leadership cannot escape the taint of its members’ misbehaviors, nor absolve themselves of their own sins.

Because where ever there is absolute power, there is also the potential for just such a group to decide it is running things – all things – having to do with the genre. They can drift in their moral imperative until they become a parody of what they intended.

When that happens, it is typically accompanied by the sensation (and then the declaration) that they are responsible for the inherent production of all quality work in the genre, that they are the rightful judges, juries and executioners, and that they are entitled to omnipotence, to proper deference…

But I say that because you are fortunate enough to find a professional paycheck in traditional publishing, mentoring by old school traditionalist editors, and/or the promotional luck of traditional publication… this is not qualification enough.

Many more of us would have joined those ranks long ago if traditional publishing had not undergone an evisceration of its way of doing business to begin with. For those of us in the genre who would be interested in becoming editors, professional writers, or working anywhere in the old traditional system, the door is firmly closed and locked. Permanently.

To claim our unemployment and lack of mentorship means we neither have the dedication, the talent, or the value of those who benefitted from that older system is a dangerous fallacy to launch in the genre.

And I say, you are not Literary Critics. Therefore at best, you think yourselves better.

In a few decades, Critics will let you know the truth of it.

But I digress…

When it comes to being a Horror writer, there has – for many years – been nothing more prestigious than the credential of belonging to the Horror Writer’s Association. For some, it means a second look by editors, perhaps a qualifying reason to be considered in an anthology or a contest or an award, and always a validation of belonging…

There is also a titillation and ego-stroking moment when one considers that not just anyone can belong to its exclusive membership. Certainly there are now (after either pressure, financial incentive, or both) associate-style memberships – the chance to lay about on the periphery with one’s nose pressed up against the glass. But I am talking bona fide membership with all of its promised perks.

As a writer, one must weigh whether this is what one wants or needs on one’s resume. And while many novice writers are star-struck at the possibility of sharing community – even if it is in another room of the same house – with the likes of the Stephen Kings of our genre, hobnobbing with famous editors, and potentially sharing a publisher with someone special – one really should think about what joining means.

Oddly, writers are not typically joiners. So it is to me amazing that like lemmings, the HWA is the cliff we are naturally expected to flock to. To desire. To covet. To lust after.

Perhaps this is because I simply do not. In full disclosure, I have no interest in the HWA.

There is nothing personal in it. I simply want to do whatever I do on my own merit, free of fetter, rebelling against my own people-pleasing gene by not-adding more people to please. And my ego is just fine, thank you, without any stroking or promises of inside knowledge and secret handshakes.

Part a very important part of the reason I chose to abstain from pursuing the goal of HWA membership (of any kind), is that I have seen and read essays on the website which I found to be dictatorial, harshly critical, and elitist in tone.

And while I am familiar with the “editorial voice” (which conversely, many editors in their very tech-writing kind of thinking is bare-bones and to-the-point, void of sugarcoating and razor sharp in its directness) completely fail to hear themselves… What I read was – at least to me – patently arrogant. They included rants and polemics about the audacity of the unpublished to call themselves writers, about the absence of concern for quality or craft, the invalidity of online magazine publications, the conceit of self-made publishers and the self-published, the self-aggrandizing pats-on-the-back…

For an organization overseen by professional, traditional editors and writers we are led to believe embody the Establishment, the lack of listening to one’s own tone or the arrogance of thinking such a privileged position is ultimately validated either by years of experience or personal position in that very organization is flat-out offensive.

Furthermore, the constant redirection of our genre by way of the HWA’s endorsement of conventions, awards, publications, publishers, writers, contests, and literary-style criticisms seems to present a conflict of interest. By their heavy artistic influence, are they not dictating the very future of our genre instead of being a forum for diversity and growth? Shaping what will be allowed to see the light of day?

While I don’t mind reading opinions, when those very opinions are not only cloaked in the guise of the HWA’s official “position,” but wield unfettered the Sword of Publication and Awards… well, things look subversive. Contrived. Controlled.

I see such overreach as a way to manipulate the type of Horror we see being published – as just another version of the Good Ole Boys’ system long lambasted about by the very writers and editors and publications the HWA is supposed to represent. When we limit the number of editors and slap a definition on “established” authors in the genre, I believe we limit the genre.

 

https://twitter.com/maggiejank/status/668053570638364672

 

For example, we look to the HWA for our Best Of anthologies, for rankings of Horror publications, and Horror editors. We also tend to only see criticisms of independently published or self-published works and self-publishing authors – because those HWA editors and publishers and writers are the ones getting the readership boost of traditional publishing. This leads newbies to the assumption that all things flow through the magic hands of the HWA, or they are renegade, unendorsed rebel works of little or no merit.

For example again, it is from the HWA that we have seen a consistent criticism of contemporary, non-HWA writers and their works. These are the writers and works (we are told) which do not conform to craft, genre conventions, or literary standard. This is (we are told) what is bringing our genre down, ruining the genre, giving everyone a bad name which Literary Critics have been complaining about.

But the HWA – like MFA programs everywhere – are ignoring what else the Literary Critic is saying: we have too much repetitive drivel pouring out of published Horror. We keep reinventing FORMULA instead of story.

(As an under-published, unknown Horror writer, you can leave me and my work out of this. But you cannot exempt the HWA or MFA programs, or traditional publishing. Sorry.)

Literary Critics don’t have the time to troll the waters of us lesser-knowns, of small press publications, graphic novels, and comic books. What they are looking at is the Big Names of contemporary Horror and all of their followers… at the very traditionally published which the HWA spends so much time lauding above the rest of us.

And regardless of the status and glory of those Big Names, Critics are not at all happy about the (perhaps) better written Horror they have inspired, because as any reader can tell us, the storytelling is just not there and we are still consistently missing the Literary mark as a genre.

We do not improve that by making a Professional Writer’s association more exclusive with a centralized star-making power machine.

We do that by educating our writers earlier…when they are still in elementary and high school. When we actually separate writers from readers and teach elements of CRAFT.

We do that by getting our hands dirty. By trolling about in pulp and bad writing and honing rusty skills, milking the story-telling gene until we rediscover how Literature works within the subtext of our genre. We do that by random publication of stories in cheap magazines, by recreating that fertile field of creativity and writing mills that enabled stars like Lovecraft, Poe, and even Stephen King to rise to prominence.

I personally do not see that endorsed by the HWA. And what I have seen or sensed, has led me away from any interest in the HWA.

The bottom line is that whenever you trust groups of people, those with subversive agendas will eventually ruin everything – or attempt to. You should always look carefully at groups and professional organizations before you join…perhaps even hang back and study them and their doings for a while.

Ask questions:

• Is the administrator/president someone who has been around awhile, has developed a reputation, and is someone with some kind of verifiable experience or track record?
• Is there more than one way to find or contact this person?
• Do you have enough information about the group to reasonably find it again if contact paths go silent?
• If you submit work, is there some sort of arrangement in place to ensure that it is not shared without your permission? And how is it disseminated and handled if rejected?
• Do you know other members, trust other members, or are you among the first members?
• What are the net benefits that you receive as a member, and are they worth your trust?
• Are you asked to pay dues, and if so, what do you get in return?
• Is there legal accountability in the organization?

If you are joining a writers’ group, there is an element of trust you have to be willing to extend – especially if it is a critique or professional group. As the administrator of a Horror writers’ APA, I suggest you not only ask the above questions, but that you participate by monitoring your first work exchange or submission within the group – how it is received, processed, handled, and/or returned. Are you treated with respect? Is your work treated with respect? Is the end result not what you want – but what you need?

You have the right to the assurance that someone is taking reasonable responsibility for the protection of your reputation and your work as a member of that group – even if it is the HWA, and especially if you are paying dues.

I truly believe that being an officer of a group of writers is a position of trust – not a reward or proof of popularity, wisdom or righteousness. There is an inferred and innate obligation to look out for both the organization and the writers within it… to guard the mission.

If the HWA can’t or won’t do that…if it is too icky to handle scandals and accusations, maybe members should wonder where their money is going.

Isn’t it supposed to be about the genre? And isn’t that by default – you?

Some writers won’t mind the fallout. Some will decide to join the HWA despite any hint of scandal in the hopes that they will only have great things happen as a result. To them I say, bon voyage. Just go in with your eyes wide open.

After all, no one ever plans to be the victim of misadventure.

 

https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/canuck-the-crow-flies-off-with-knife-from-crime-scene-in-vancouver-1.2918801

 

  

Greater Rocky Mountain Horror Writers APA welcomes writers of all stripes and levels, currently at no cost. Visit our recruitment and club webpage at https://grmhwapa.wordpress.com/

 

Cthulhu Worshippers: Is the Rise of Themed Anthologies Good For Horror?

When I recently looked across the sea of my past years’ Horror purchases, I was struck by just how many Lovecraft anthologies there were. Themed anthologies are on the steady increase – collections dedicated to one author’s established universe, one established monster, or one Horror concept. And of those themes, the work of H.P. Lovecraft absolutely dominates. Yet as open-minded as I try to be in my Horror story collecting, I found an alarming amount of tentacles on my shelves.

Herein lay a truth: I am a sucker for tentacles. I enjoy reading Lovecraftian fiction…but I do not tend to write it.

So if I did not purchase more generic modern collections, what did it mean? Were they not out there? Granted, I discriminate against vampire collections and I have not yet dipped my toes into steampunk-tinted Horror… But the prolific dominance of Lovecraft struck me as more than coincidence.

So that begs the question what does it mean for Horror writers – this rise in themed anthologies of which Lovecraft dominates?

Too Much of a Good Thing

World class Horror editor Paula Guran states in her introduction to The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror 2016, “…there were around 15 anthologies of Lovecraftian tales published in 2015 – not to mention other venues that published such stories…”(8)

Fifteen! I am imagining that this is – like – twelve anthologies of Lovecraftian fiction we did not need that year….twelve opportunities for other stories of Horror fiction to have been officially birthed in our world.

Perhaps that is the bulk of the type of Horror being published today. But maybe, just maybe, the singular and collective weight of ALL of the same kind of anthologies in my personal library means something besides my own addiction: maybe it means our genre has fallen into a rut.

No, I thought…surely it can’t be….

And yet the proof is on every bookstore shelf. And it is causing my floors to sag.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fan Fiction: Let’s Call It What It Is

Believe it or not, it starts with Technology. Technology has caused a lot of changes to publishing in general and to Horror in particular. Horror has grown toward Hollywood like weeds to the sun…

In her essay, “Blurring the Lines,” Amber Benson states, “There used to be a hard-and-fast rule. There was “them” and then there was “us.” “Them” was made up of artists – the people who created TV shows, books, films, music, and visual art. “Us” was the group of people who consumed what they made. “Them” was set apart from “us” because “them” was creating material that was disseminated, on a large scale, to “us” out there in the real world. “Us” could enjoy “them” and their work, but “us” could not contribute to the creations we loved in any appreciable fashion…But then something interesting happened: the internet took over the world, and this hard-and-fast rule slowly began to disintegrate. All of a sudden “us” was able to horn in on “them” and their creative process in a very public way – most notably in the form of fanfiction.” (Jamison, 334)

Enter the world of Big Money. Enter the world of Twilight and Fifty Shades of Gray… That’s right: Fifty Shades started as – believe it or not – a fanfiction of Twilight. And for that mystery of artistic and unholy alliances, one has merely to follow the money trail… Hollywood has discovered the great storytelling in fanfic Vampires and scary entities that populate urban legend. This has led to the migration of the movie public to the bookstore titles traditional publishing has cringed at, yet harvested with tremendous profits.

Such success has in turn inspired fanfic sites to create and self-publish their own anthologies, not always to as profitable acclaim. But Hollywood has noticed. The fanfic writing collective that is Creepypasta (http://www.creepypasta.org/) is the undisputed home of such well-known Hollywood pollinating characters as Slender Man, Eyeless Jack, Jeff the Killer, and The Rake…

To the Horror Establishment’s chagrin, this is where a lot of “real” modern Horror resides – neatly ensconced in the folds of pulpy Fan Fiction, tucked away in secretive places on the internet. And it is thriving there… perhaps because of technology… and with no thanks to more “reputable forms of publishing.” Creepypasta has established its own reputable form… and its ever-growing following is testament not perhaps to content so much as its aspirations to recreate the much adored Horror of Yore…

Much of its content is literarily a bumpy ride, reminiscent of the fireside tale, campy cautionary tales Horror is known for… but it is a ride worth taking – fun, engaging, scary, and pure pulp.

All of that flies in the face of technology and Literature itself – the very tech that threatened to permanently banish Horror to the history shelves – or worse, to sociology….

The question traditional Horror folk have is that with such “obvious technical flaws” why is fanfic doing so well and in sharp contrast to traditional publishing?

Part of the problem is indeed that invasion of technology that slaughtered traditional Horror. Fanfic took the scythe away from the reaper and built its own platform of resistance. Isn’t it interesting that we acolytes of traditional Horror writing are “borrowing” from those sites and their writers?

To sort this out and give credit where credit is due, we have to admit that for traditional Horror fiction there is a price to pay for having so much in neat, shiny new toys to mesmerize and distract us like a roomful of little children. And fanfic places like Creepypasta have managed to tap into that elusive “something” that old Horror fiction’s corpse remains animated by, the very thing that lurks behind the everlasting light of electronic devices… And ironically, it is that same thing that so much published modern Horror has failed to find; too often it is dismissed as cliché or trite…because handled ineptly or too pulp-like it can be…

It is appropriate that technology has also led to a lot of pushback toward the older styles of storytelling – embracing the chapters of Horror’s own history where writers combined forces with artists and landed in pulpy swamps, creating comic books and graphic novels, seeking independent means of publication and now internet ones. It is, undoubtedly, a rebellion.

One of the largest surges backward has happened in Fan Fiction – that oft-chided subgenre of all genres where it is always and only about the storytelling and known characters. It is often – in Horror – purely reminiscent of urban legends (even new ones and contrived ones), about successful movies and video games. But it is also about the kind of writing traditional fiction writers deign to acknowledge and love to “abhor.”

With Horror fanfiction there is always a component of dark fantasy afoot, laced with what can only be called a rabid fan loyalty, and within its closed communities it provides a creative space made to sow all wild seeds of imagination. There is instant editorial and fan feedback – because its audience knows by heart every sustainable plot and can grasp every new realistic possibility. Fan Fiction forces a writer to mind the lines – to know the character and the fiction world it lives in – to write to spec with twists and caricatures and secrets and alternate endings. These are the speculative, secret-seeming chapters about characters from stories you love. Fan Fiction (officially “fanfic” in their world) is its own world.

This goes against the grain of the isolated, socially dysfunctional curmudgeon most writer’s manuals claim we should be, and whatever delusion we ourselves subscribe to…No wonder there is “rivalry” if not jealousy; our environment is less supportive of our endeavors. And far too many of us consider the running of that lonely gauntlet to be a professional requirement for doing a “respectable” job… We shrink from fellow writers bold enough to just “put it out there” all un-vetted and unadorned.

Back to the Themed Drawing Board

So how did such unsavory fanfic elements leak back into traditional Horror? The answer may be as simple as admitting to the struggle for contemporary Horror to re-discover its voice…to reconnect with our roots and regain Critical respect.

We have no choice but to admit that “traditionally published” modern Horror in America has lost its way… And while it could be a consequence of all of the technology that blossomed around us (willing participants or not), that unavoidable invasion of all things glossy and new that supplanted what the imagination needs to drive darker fantasy and fear: abandoned sites of historical ambiance, the ruins of our own civilization, the decay of our own lifetimes. Our minds dismiss the shadowed failings of our civilization. We are in denial.

Modern Horror writers have noticed. They have questioned the same way editors and Critics and readers have questioned what is wrong with our Horror today that we are not duly terrified by the words? And just like the editors and Critics and readers, we have flooded back to the early writers – the ones who did scare us – to ask how and why. Why did their words work and how do we tap into that zeitgeist?

That means we are not only looking at Stephen King and Clive Barker, but we are also looking at Lovecraft and Poe and James and Blackwood and LeFanu… We are re-reading our unofficial canon. And we are being influenced.

So maybe the next logical step is themed anthologies… Indeed nothing helps a writer get into the head of his or her idol like writing “in the tradition” of that writer – borrowing that author’s personally tailored conventions – and learning how to “write to specifications” of an editor or market. Getting one’s head in there also exposes weaknesses in the boundaries the author may have touched… It inadvertently uncovers and explores some of the themes and higher concepts that interest (get ready for it) Literary Critics… So imitation can become a lesson in how to create Literary elements – fleshing out your own work with those dual-meanings best recognized by lovers of poetry.

Imagine. But there is also another interesting side-effect to themed anthologies: the pretense of elevating Fan Fiction to a more “legitimate” professional space.

And the fact that everyone just dances around that pretense is rather amazing to me – and insulting to the very real, already legitimate world of fanfic writers…

We should call what we are doing exactly what we are doing: pillaging fanfic for the desperately needed blood infusion into modern American Horror. But we are sharing the same nurturing roots, two branches of the same tree.

At the very least, we are in keeping with tradition here – even Fan Fiction traditions. According to Anne Jamison in her totally fascinating book,  Fic: Why Fan Fiction is Taking Over the World  (Dallas, TX: Smart Pop, c2013) we have been at it since Sherlock Holmes, even as times have changed the way Fan Fiction is derived. Says Jamison, “None of these earlier literary practices are exactly the equivalent as what we understand as fanfiction today…Our understanding of the key relationships – those that exist variously among writer, written, reader, publisher, object published, and source – changes over time. What doesn’t change, or rather, what never disappears, is the writerly habit of writing from other sources.” (35) In other words – imitation.

Imitation is one of the ways writers learn to write. Continues Jamison, “Writers have always entered into and intervened in familiar stories and styles and collaborated on authorship through discussion or other forms of influence…We have long given (or ceded) credit, ultimately, to a single authorial name – and fan fiction, with all its collaborative glee, continues that tradition.” (35)

It is why Fan Fiction is a wonderful environment for learning about story-telling and how important it is to stick to conventions established for certain monsters and to explore all of the possibilities of character – to retell stories until you get the right version told – the one that sings. It is a place in which a writer learns the importance of the reader (who might well more passionately know your character’s potential than even you) and the utter necessity of toeing the line of logic.

These are the reasons writers have “pirated” the concept of Fan Fiction and re-christened the process as writing more reputable product for themed anthologies. Writers – like the editors who solicit them – have accepted the challenge to “write in the tradition of Lovecraft”… to tell “new” stories in a way Lovecraft himself might have approved.

Yet it is subversively (and maybe perversely) almost a Frankenstein effort: are we trying on writerly hats, or are editors so hungry for Lovecraft-level work that they won’t stop until they find a substitute? Why are we so infatuated that we are publishing Lovecraft Fan Fiction in place of original modern Horror fiction?

I mean, I’m not sure, but I think we should feel insulted…

Don’t get me wrong: even I have written some fanfic-styled things myself – just for the challenge of doing so. They were fun to write and the ghost of copyright hangs over them. But fun and education was neatly tucked into the experience of writing them. The End.  I am thinking that outside of coincidence or anniversary tributes, there should be limits to the traditional publishing of fanfic themed anthologies. I mean if you really want original work…truly new, original work….

What is good for Horror writers may not be good for the genre as a whole… Sure we need to master mimicry the way artists master Masters – to learn the many techniques available to us. Then we need to paint our own pictures, mix our own palettes. We need to explore, to shed fetters, to find new ways of scaring, to play with language and the darker, clawed things that clutter our minds.

While we are casting our creative nets wider, we need to grow up and also cast aside our personal demons with regard to levels of professional legitimacy. Our genre grows from varied roots, and we don’t all have to write Literature or be professional outcasts. Most certainly there are standard differences, vetting differences, editorial differences. But in the end readers want to read good, scary Horror. So do Horror writers, who coincidentally hope to write the stuff that way.

We need to acknowledge with due respect where we get our inspirations, where we place our stories, and the audience that loves them. We need to consider that maybe fanfic is doing so well because those writers are telling the stories people want to read in our genre, because our genre is too obsessed with ideals of perfection and we are not listening to part of our constituency.

That maybe – just maybe – we need to teach, train, coach and mentor writers who DO want to write more Literary Horror.  That maybe we should stop with the whole mystical search for the next writing messiah to bring Big Money back to publishing.

We also need to admit when we seize and repurpose a tradition for our own use and profit, and recognize that the whole real problem is that maybe just maybe there aren’t enough “legitimately recognized” venues for the number of writers in our genre, or enough Horror being traditionally published, or that traditional publishing needs to acknowledge the value – monetary and artistically contributory – that “illegitimate forms of writing” bring to the genre – that therefore, perhaps they ARE legitimate, just different.

I think we must do what only we can do… We need to have faith in our own fiction voices, our own stories, our own versions of characters and plots, even if that means we don’t see a market for them right now. Be true to yourself and your Muse.  Don’t let the mirage of fame and alleged Overnight Success color your choices. As long as we are imitating Lovecraft, let’s do it right: Lovecraft imitated nobody. He preferred to not be published than to sell out for money.

And as for the illusive possibility that you would be discovered and beloved in this lifetime? Well, the public is fickle. If you ever do connect suddenly with a following, you need to have work in the wings, ready to go. If you don’t, someone who does will step in front of you…maybe even out-fanfic you…

And that would be more than a shame. It would be pure, unmitigated Horror.

References

Benson, Amber. “Blurring the Lines.” (p. 384-388) Fic: Why Fan Fiction is Taking Over the World. Dallas, TX: Smart Pop, c2013.

Guran, Paula, ed. The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror 2016. Germantown, MD: Prime Books, c2016.

Jamison, Anne. Fic: Why Fan Fiction is Taking Over the World. Dallas, TX: Smart Pop, c2013

 

 

Where is #26? Mammoth’s Best New Horror Goes Hardback

If you think you hear the gnashing of teeth….It might be me.

As if it wasn’t hard enough waiting almost two years for any given year’s Best New Horror from Britain’s Stephen Jones…

Now most of us will have to wait even longer to own it, because BNH #26– missing for almost two years now from American shelves, has gone hardback and gone exclusive in distribution. And the cost alone will take it out of the hands of many while making the reservation queue at libraries even longer….a whopping $45 American.

Well… if and when it gets here for the rest of us brick-and-mortar diehards…

This is not the news I was waiting for. But I am pretty sure that is me on the cover when I heard the price.

For those who don’t know, Stephen Jones is probably the apex editor of all Horror fiction. His work is the most recognized, the most lauded, the most respected in the genre. For many fans, he does not just have his fingers on the pulse of Horror – he holds its bloody, pulsating heart.

His editorial picks are the ones we excitedly wait for as fans, and the ones we lust after as writers. He knows his stuff and he knows the genre like few others. His typically lengthy year-in-review introductions are practically annual documentaries of what is happening in the genre on both sides of the pond, in publishing, in editing, and in markets. The historical value of the front matter alone is typically worth the price of the book. And if you are a writer or serious fan, it has probably been an indispensable part of your genre history files.

So what on earth possessed Mammoth to issue it in an unforgivably expensive hardback edition, and then to not just physically release it everywhere here in the U.S.?

It’s bad enough that we seldom get British Horror in the United States – neither as announced availability nor in our brick-and-mortars, and now this elusive (still not available in most bookstores from P.S. Publishing) annual collection from 2015 has gone elite on us.  Although Amazon claims to have access, why isn’t this available anywhere else? I work for one of the largest bookstore chains in the U.S. and I cannot order it. Not for me…not for my customers.

And what is with the price?

The whole pricing issue in adult book publishing is so frustrating. I am always hearing how Young Adult is the big moneymaker…that this is where sales rule. I also hear that this is why they suppress the price of YA fiction. And I am thinking:

Just WHO is the Brainiac who decides that YA is popular and therefore they must keep the prices down and NOT that YA is popular BECAUSE the prices are kept down?

(I know. I am ranting. But I wait for this collection every year…. And now I am bitter. And by its own e-sample introduction, #26 states right off the bat that “67% of books sold in America were in print format” as opposed to 23% in e-book format… so WHY are our choices e-book or a brick of gold to the Amazon gods?)

Really. The sticker shock is absolutely paralyzing as it is…just wander from YA and see what I mean: visit children’s picture books at an average of $17.95 by comparison. Or tour the adult section where a YA hardback is $10.95 and an adult hardback is now typically $27.95.

This is part of the reason Adult Horror fans have defected to YA Horror…and why IF print sales suffer, price has a lot to do with it.

I mean I was “willing” to shell out $27.95 for Best Horror in hardback…but $45 is giving me serious pause. That is one-fourth of my weekly income.

Maybe I’ll just wait for the movie…

Conspiracy Theory, Anyone?

But what really ticks me off, is that because of the pricing the sales will plummet as compared to other anthologies and other years. “They” will say, “lookit…Horror is not selling. Not even Stephen Jones.”

Granted, ALL of fiction sales are down in adult anything. But we aren’t going to reverse that course by making what is a relatively sure guarantee of a good anthology ungodly expensive and limited in availability.  Mammoth….what is wrong with you?!

Does this feel like a conspiracy to you? Somebody is putting a strangle hold on our genre. They are publishing everything in hardback sporting optimum prices and nobody but Stephen King can pull that out…and I’ve even seen King fans put other selections back just so they could afford the one hardback. Then publishers deign to brag how Horror is dead, the proof being in the sales.

Pish tush. Give us back our paperbacks and our section. We’ll show you… the relative and consistent successes of American editors Ellen Datlow and Paula Guran should be proper “evidence”… and seriously….GIT YER MITS OFF THE BRITISH!

Our economy is on life-support and our paychecks with expendable cash are dead-on-arrival. That has nothing whatsoever to do with not wanting to buy Horror; just check out the long reserve lists at libraries. However, it has everything to do with buying expensive books by writers that come with satisfaction guaranteed (like classics, or Rice, Campbell and King), and with shopping the bargain tables.

Nobody disputes the need for hard cash to pay for professional editing and snazzy covers – we want that and are willing to pay for that. But some of us don’t have a first born to give or a second mortgage to take out. Killing variety and choice and then raising the prices on what remains is NOT going to improve profits. People who would otherwise spend their grocery money (like I used to and sometimes still do) are going to just walk out of the store. For too many, $45 might as well be a million. We can’t do it. We won’t do it. Even for British Horror.

And that says nothing about what this does to American Horror writing…Keeping British Horror writers visible is important; they are our inspiration and our competition. If we can’t write like them or in spite of them, we lose our creative momentum, the all-important sense of genre tradition, the gravitational pull of their moon, the directions of genre evolution in the English language, and just some darn good reading.

Our editors continue to complain about our lack of originality and our knowledge of our own Horror lineage. So sure it makes perfect sense to just cut us off from the Brits… the Keepers of our Origin Mythology… (I am being sarcastic.) This feels like censorship, even if one is trying to protect American publishing: we should do that by writing better fiction or getting better editors or better publishers…hey? I am saying our genre on the American side is suffering from this isolationism.

And donning a higher price point also says nothing about repairing our need to just read in our genre – and read broadly. The British are a distinct “flavor” in the genre, and an important historical root.  Whether it is because they are writing better Horror, have more Horror writers, or because they have more respected publishing venues is hard to say. They are a major force we need to include in the shaping of our own American tradition. And if the American publishing scene makes us all feel like there are only about fifteen “real” Horror writers in the professional ranks, we need the International wake-up call that there are indeed many more out there – each successfully defining their own voice, providing other examples of how to do it.

I sincerely hope Mammoth re-thinks their new format and marketing plans. I can see this kind of thing being done for a special edition, or offering a limited run for collectors, or even exclusive release in exchange for special promotions. But most of us just want our British Horror. It shouldn’t be cheaper to fly to Britain personally just to see what is happening in the genre across the sea, or to have to rely on a handful of American editorial tastes to sample good British Horror.

Meanwhile, I am headed back to (mostly) American Horror and whatever I find in the aisles of my store. No Stephen Jones for me. Not this year.

 

Things Found on Shelves (More & Other Horror to Soothe the Recently Horrified):

So here is some new Horror I have found by wandering my bookstore and putting things away:

Novels

Curse of the Zombie by Ray Cluley. Great Britain: Hersham Horror Books, c2014. POD pbk: $10.99

Disappearance at Devil’s Rock by Paul Tremblay. HarperCollins Publishers, c2016, HC $25.99

Hater by David Moody. Thomas Dunne Books, c2006, pbk $14.99

The Hatching by Ezekiel Boone. Atria Books, c 2016, HC $26.00

Hex by Thomas Olde Heuvelt. Tom Doherty Associates LLC, c2016. HC $25.99

I Am Providence by Nick Mamatas. Night Shade Books, C2016, pbk $15.99

Invasion of the Body Snatchers by Jack Finney. 60^th Anniversary edition.  New York: Touchstone, c 1954, 1955, 1978. Pbk $15.99

Maledicus: The Investigative Paranormal Society Book I by Charles French. Gopublished.com: Charles French, c2016. POD Pbk $15.00 Mirror Image by Michael Scott and Melanie Ruth Rose. New York: Tom Doherty Associates, c2016. HC $25.99

My Best Friend’s Exorcism by Grady Hendrix. Quirk Publishing, c2016, HC $19.99

Water for Drowning by Ray Cluley. Reat Britain: Hersham Horror, 2014. POD pbk. $7.99

Anthologies

The Best Horror of the Year Vol. 8 edited by Ellen Datlow. Night Shade Books, c2016 $15.99

Chilling Horror Short Stories: Anthology of New & Classic Tales. Laura Bulbeck, series ed. London: Flame Tree Publishing, c2016, 2015. HC $9.98

Chilling Ghost Short Stories: Anthology of New & Classic Tales. Laura Bulbeck, series ed. London: Flame Tree Publishing, c2016, 2015. HC $9.98

The Color of Evil. David G. Hartwell, ed. New York: Tom Doherty Associates, c1987. Pbk $8.99

The Creepy Pasta Collection: Modern Urban Legends You Can’t Unread edited by Mr.CreepyPasta, Adams Media, c2016, pbk $15.29

Dark Horizons: an Anthology of Dark Science Fiction. Charles P. Zaglanis, ed. Lake Orion, MI: Elder Signs Press, c2016. Pbk $14.95

Fresh Fear: an Anthology of Macabre Horror edited by William Cook, King Billy Publications, c2016, pbk, $16.00

Great Ghost Stories: 101 Terrifying Tales. Stefan Dziemianowicz, ed. New York: Fall River Press, c2016. HC $7.98

The Mammoth Book of Kaiju: 27 Tales of Monster Mayhem. Sean Wallace, ed. (First published in) Great Britain: Prime Books, c2016. Pbk $16.95

Nightmares: a New Decade of Modern Horror. Ellen Datlow, ed. San Francisco, CA: Tachyon Publications LLC, c2016. pbk $16.95

Peel Back the Skin: Anthology of Horror Stories. Anthony Rivera and Sharon Lawson, eds. Chicago, IL: Grey Matter Press, c2016, pbk $16.99

Things From Outer Space. Hank Davis, ed. Riverdale, NY: Baen Books, c2016. Pbk. $7.99

The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror 2016 edited by Paula Guran, Prime Books, c2016 pbk $19.95

 

About Horror

Franklin, Ruth. Shirley Jackson: a Rather Haunted Life. New YorK: W.W. Norton & Company, c2016 HC $35.00

Frayling, Christopher. Vampyres: Genesis and Resurrection: From Count Dracula to Vampirella. New York:Thames and Hudson, c2016. HC $27.60

Peterson, David J. The Art of Language Invention: From Horse Lords to Dark Elves, the Words Behind World-Building. New York: Penguin Books, c2015.

Schneck, Robert Damon. The Bye Bye Man and Other Strange-But-True Tales. New York: Tarcher Perigree Press, c2005. Pbk $15.00

Vuckovic, Jovanka. Vuckovic’s Horror Miscellany: Stories, Facts, Tales & Trivia. New York: Metro Books, c2015. HC $7.98

 

 

Wrestling With the Best: Why Today’s Horror Isn’t As Scary

People who love Horror love being scared – just for a few moments, and in a there-but-for-the-grace-of-God-go-I sort of way.

So imagine the Horror of purchasing a Best Of Horror collection and not being scared. Not even once.

Increasingly, this is a complaint made by Horror fans. What has happened to Horror? we demand. Where’s all the good scary stuff?

And why we challenge, isn’t the Best of Horror striking us all as the best of the genre?

“Best” is a Relative Term

For one thing, where any of the arts are concerned, “best” depends on one’s own perspective. Should “best” mean the scariest? Those utilizing the most accepted tropes and conventions? The most capably written? The most genre or the most Literary? Those only birthed by accomplished and previously published writers?

Someone somewhere has to decide on the criteria which defines the “best”… typically that is not you or me, but established and well-read editors of Horror. Because we may not agree already on a molecular level, it’s hard to know as a reader whether one is even being guaranteed to be scared – a given most suppose is inherent to the genre – although one should at least expect to be disturbed.

Still, an editor has a lot on his or her plate; everything from demanding a good story to demanding a well-told story and maybe—just maybe—having a totally different opinion on what is scary while being significantly different than what he or she has read before. So.

One should never confuse the best with the best that crosses the desk of any given editor.

Furthermore, with less print magazines and even less newspapers printing Horror stories, with less print books being published the old-fashioned way in general, there cannot be anything but less Horror being published to be judged than in Horror’s heyday… (clearly a point upon which I and some editors professionally disagree.)

This should never be mistaken for opportunity to be “published” – either online, self-published or subsidy published. However. If Literary Critics, the Horror Writer’s Association, and our top-notch editors are all going to disregard or downplay those publishing “options”… if they are going to automatically judge them as untidy, improperly edited, illegitimately birthed bastard children of the genre and thereby refuse to acknowledge or consider them as entries for The Best… then I argue that they don’t exist. At least, not in the average genre editor’s mind …and certainly not in a print anthology of The Best.

This means that for story, for concept, there can be more scary Horror stories out on the web or in some self-or-otherwise published format than in a print anthology. But it may also mean that their elements of craft and editorial merits are – in genre terms – unverified if not found wanting altogether.

This has to mean something, and it is most often not good for e-written, self-published Horror.  Being so-published puts “published” in quotes, and disqualifies the work in the minds of many of the genre elite.  But it also establishes standards for how we judge The Best and opens a whole other conversation about what said standards should be, even as this still equates to less Horror being defined as “properly published,” and/or less Horror being entered into the judging.

It also tends to mean that those previously published in print tend to provide stories which more consistently fire on all editorial “required and desired” pistons… making them both more attractive to editors and more likely to provide marketing power and purchasing incentive (admit it: how many times have you walked away from an anthology because you didn’t know the writers or the editors?)

Furthermore, even though I fully understand the need for publishers to balance their new publications on the backs of established writers to navigate these shark-infested, crisis-corrupted waters and guarantee some modicum of profit… at the same time it means less gambling on both new writers and deeper adventures and experimentation with originality in the genre.

Because like “best,” “original” is another matter of opinion.

What we are seeing is a kind of mainstreaming of Horror – ironically created by fear and stroked by strong inner desires to see Horror legitimized as Literary. (That would be fear of not-selling enough books or magazines to turn a healthy profit, and Literary enough to warrant Critical attention if not acclaim.)

So while we can say that what we read as The Best is properly edited, soundly constructed and at least “good”… some fans are coming up for air and wondering why they read a whole anthology of The Best and weren’t feeling properly scared.

Then we have to look again at what the word “Best” really defines. Is it merely a question of a “good” story with “good” technique? And is what scares you the same as what scares a Horror editor?

We have to face yet another important truth here: Horror is relative: we all fear different things, and different things at different stages of our lives. Editors are not exempt from this rule. So maybe we simply have a disconnect that is lodged somewhere between taste, and generation.

Or maybe modern Horror has lost its edge? Maybe we aren’t writing the same kind of Horror many of us grew up with.

There are reasons for this. So let’s take a look at a few of them.

We’re All Grown Ups Here: Adult versus Young Adult Horror

When Horror began getting ‘critical’ attention, it was basically negative – denigrated as a pulp category designed to titillate pre-pubescent boys. But it has been in this century that Literary Critics have begun – due to no small amount of urging by our genre writers and editors (including some of the Greats like Poe and Lovecraft) – to rethink the issue. What was found is that entangled in the roots of Horror were a surprisingly large chunk of women writing for women in the early days of pulp (or Sensation Fiction as it was once known). The need or interest in titillating young boys and men came later. And all of it came after fairy tales and cautionary stories told in caves and around campfires to keep children close and mindful.

So even though we can trace a male-generated lineage all the way back to Walpole and his Castle of Otranto (commonly accepted as the earliest modern work of Horror), we also have the depth of women’s writings to glean from and gloat over which added literary concerns to the genre – social, cultural, racial and gender issues masked by ghosts and monsters. That helped in redirecting the attention of Critics to early male writers anew with different Literary perspective. And it wasn’t long before Critics began to realize that the Critical arguments put forth by Poe and Lovecraft were…right.

Therefore, Horror developed creative branches deserving equal attention quite early in its evolution. And as we have traversed the eras since its initial seeding, the light of critical focus and popular focus have not always agreed about…well, what is best.

This has changed Horror. We are renegotiating the terms upon which good Horror is written, read, and Criticized. These are –alas – not equally motivated.

The contemporary “discussion” has snatched the argument from the hands of Critics and landed it squarely in those of the reading public in a battle for the best storytelling – because readers don’t read like Literary Critics or editors, and because in today’s world we are talking SALES. Readers of Horror want to be scared, to have a bit of macabre fun. This has baffled Critics and led to authors like Stephen King becoming canon bestsellers while defying older theories and forms of Literary Critical analysis. There is a rift in Criticism, a rift in readership, and a rift in editorial oversight. We simply can’t agree yet.

Somewhere between the urge to read well-told Horror stories and to flee the whole argument over Literary-ness, a lot of readers – including adult readers –  have discovered Young Adult Horror. This general adults-reading-Young-Adult-fiction has been so unsettling to publishers, that they invented a whole new category called “New Adult Fiction” to blur the lines drawn in the sand.

But in Horror the lines remain clear: adults are not being scared by most current adult Horror.

Forget for a moment that some of us may be wont to recapture our youth… that we still like to identify with the perils of young adulthood and still see scared fifteen-year-old eyes in much older visages that greet us in the morning mirror. Today’s Young Adult Horror is priced better, has great marketing in book cover design, is well-edited, well-written, and offers creative (although due to the genre often under- or lesser-developed) plot lines and characterization.

Small wonder that we have lost many adult readers to Young Adult fiction. And I don’t think creating a whole ‘nuther genre called New Adult fiction is going to fix things for our genre. But we need to take a page from Young Adult Horror if we are going to “fix” what is broken in Adult Horror.

Horror fans want to be scared – not just grossed out, not dazzled by Literary execution. While readers do want quality technique in Adult Horror (they know it when they see it and drop it when they don’t), they don’t want Jane Austen, either. They are genre readers. So publishers need to reel in the rush to Literary Horror and let the genre writers have their heads.

We need to experiment – even if that means producing some particularly garish failures. We have only to look at the history of the genre to see that it is most frequently the writers on the edges of acceptability who turn out to be the genre changers… the ones who up the game.

But Adult Horror – if we are going to win back those readers that fled to Young Adult fiction – also needs better pricing (even if it means a return to mass market paperback or cheap pulp formats), more of an investment in quality book cover art and design (including the utilization of new and unknown artists), better advertisement that it is there (a return to spine categorization that identifies a book as Horror would really, really help if we can’t our section back in bookstores), and accepting that it is okay if new writers fall flat in a cheap format because (again) in the trenches is where you find innovation as well.

Adult Horror also needs – apologies to those offended – more than three editors. We need enough editors that a reader and a writer can find his or her niche in the genre and the audience can drive trends. They do this when they can find writers, editors and publisher that they like (Look at Prime for Horror and Baen Books or Tor for Science Fiction as examples.)

Sure there is expense. There is because you have to spend money to make money.  Horror cannot live off Stephen King alone. And readers and writers both in Adult Horror want some sense of variety. But just like the Publisher, we can’t afford to spend a lot of money on a gamble. So give us the B-list, the minor leagues, the feeder teams. Give it to us or we will be forced to elbow Young Adults in their own Horror section.

And that is just a little bit too sad.

Adult Horror needs to be lean and mean and competitive. It needs to be cheap and easily available. As a reader and writer of the genre, I say: Help us.

Coming of Age: Horror Goes Legit

There is another, more subversive reason Horror isn’t “hitting” most of us right. There really is something different. The difference has to do with the Quest for Critical Acceptance; i.e., the development of Literary Horror.

Up in the Ivory Tower, those of us lower down have the impression that “They” think “we” supposedly “don’t get it.”

“They” could not be more wrong. “We” have been reading and loving Horror for almost as long as “They” have. We have defended our reading (and in some cases, the writing) of it to parents, friends, teachers, and coworkers for years…years I tell you.

We detest “badly” written Horror as much as the most snobbish Literary Critic. We cringe at the same bad editing, bad ideas, bad monsters. We laud Lovecraft, worship Poe, defend King, miss Barker, applaud Rice, and endlessly search for Lee… We love-hate the British, scorn-yet-purchase-tickets for Hollywood, and endlessly hunt an oft-referenced canon that does not exist yet.

Like the genre itself, we have come of age as well. We know the time for Literary Horror has come. But we also know it has not flowered and matured properly yet. We know that because we are reading The Best, and most of the time we are not scared. Still, we are not stupid.

We appreciate the stories that titillate, but voraciously defend the legitimacy of our genre and the right of many of its writers to be included in what is called Literature. We know there is a difference between what is called “genre” and what is called “Literature” even though many of us do not understand what those differences entail. Some of us do; some of us have been educating ourselves on the matter… and like editors of The Best, like publishers, like Critics… we understand the very battle we have been fighting since we sensed something special was going on with certain of our writers.

The reason is quality.

We recognize that the Horror genre is still fighting back from the dark days of pulp Criticism. As a result, we have seen the genre elite close ranks when they are confronted by upstart, poorly edited, poorly constructed works. And we understand. This is where storytelling and craft part ways, and this is a dangerous intersection for the genre. As painful as it may be to admit, we all have to confess that proper structure and proper editing are important elements that must be safeguarded and even demanded.

But we also have to admit that Horror is not just Literature any more than it was just pulp. It is both. At all times and sometimes at the same time.

There is nothing wrong with pulp. It is simply seldom Literature.

It seems that in the rush to gain the Horror genre its rightful legitimacy, we are out to crucify its roots and slash-and-burn its more unruly branches.

How un-Horror-like.

But this is one of the reasons why so much Horror found in a “Best” collection isn’t scary. Horror is exploring its Literary heritage and testing Literary avenues. It is redefining itself from the Best Scary to the Best Executed Scary… and that means a shedding of some of the more recognizable genre conventions… which ironically, have made the stories less scary while increasing the Literary quotient.

This is not all bad. But it does mean that the genre is having growing pains while attempting to serve two masters – the readers and editors who are on-board with the Critics.

(NOTE: Critics are NOT Lucifer. They ARE good for the genre, and a LOT of Horror deserves to be recognized as both Horror AND Literature, for which we need CRITICS.)

However. We also need to let Horror be Horror, to be genre. It’s okay. Some of us can do both. Many of us like things that way.  We recognize and support the battle and The Cause. But we also like to be a teeny bit scared and to have a little pulp with our caviar.

Making Time to Discover the Best

Readers today expect instant Horror. And when they get it, they claim it wasn’t rich enough, wasn’t real enough, wasn’t scary enough.

Enter the Age of Technology, complete with its alleged disinterest in lengthy prose and less time to read it in.

But here’s the truth: It takes time to be scared. It takes an investment by the writer to create heavy, heady atmosphere, and it takes an investment by the reader willing to follow us down the darkening path.

Good Horror cannot be rushed. But we as writers are told that we shouldn’t waste time on big sentences, on flowery delivery, on excessive adjectives, on big words no one wants to look up. We are told we have mere phrases to “hook” a reader, and that no one really wants to read something that takes more than a couple hundred pages in the telling.

Yet this goes against every writer-ly grain. The selection of the exact right word or phrase is part of the creative process… it is frequently nonnegotiable. It contributes to “voice” and atmosphere. It is part of the story.

We have been told this for years… we have been told to “dumb down” our writing for the New Generation Who Doesn’t Like to Be Bothered.

Lies. All of it.

Stephen King – our current genre patriarch – writes tomes… hundreds and hundreds of pages and we still can’t get enough. “Today’s youth don’t read”? Kids and Young Adults are the ones driving modern bookstore sales. Young Adult Horror outsells Adult Horror. Classics written a century ago outsell newer Horror bestsellers… Liar, liar, Zombies on fire.

We have been told that technology has created a class of reader who skims, who cherry-pick information.

Well Horror writers don’t write for them. We write for readers who want to be submerged in murky detail and mere suggestions of things moving around them in the dark. Good things come to those who wait – both monsters and readers. Sure, sometimes we get it wrong. Sometimes a climax is too anti-climactic. But one never knows who likes what. We try. Sometimes we succeed… And then Horror sprouts wings….dark leathery wings that smell like serpents.

Every Horror story is a gamble. Some will scoff at the ending. Others may need therapy. It’s why we read Horror and why we write Horror.

But it means a person must be willing to take the time to let the spell work. No skimming. No cherry-picking. Otherwise a reader has no business complaining that they didn’t feel scared; you have to trust the writer who intends to betray you to the monster. You have to accept that a writer has very specifically chosen the words used to lure you into the deep woods.

And maybe – to be properly scared – that’s where you should go to read it. At the very least a reader may need to turn off the technology. A reader needs to be isolated for the monster to approach. Go somewhere where you are uninterrupted, where you can be alone. Turn down the lights. Take Poe or Lovecraft or Machen with you… just see if you aren’t scared after reading – after digesting – one story.

Why doesn’t an anthology pick scare you? Did you give it your full, undivided attention? All great Horror requires the investment of time. Without it, you will never find the Best. Or perhaps you just didn’t like it. Maybe you don’t like that editor’s tastes and preferences. Try another. And another. When you find The One – your personal “Best” – it will be worth it. It’s quite okay if a Top Editor didn’t feel the same, or if it isn’t Literary. Best is a relative term.

Ultimately, all of this means that not every collection will measure up to your own, very personal expectations. And yes, it is tiring to sort through all of the different styles of writers and editors. It is also getting much harder to weed out nuances being created by MFA program writers, the re-structured New York publishing preferences, the influence of Literature on writers trying to “up the game” in Horror, the motivations of reviewers, the jargon of Critics…

Horror is redefining itself, looking for that new-and-improved identity that will help reclaim sales and market share. It is looking for you.

Keep searching. Keep reading. When we catch the wind again, when we uncover the next Stephen King or Lovecraft, you will want to be there.

And when will Horror be consistently scary again? When we’ve mastered our own egos enough to let the monsters out of the closet, whether they climb out of the pulps or claw their way from in between lines of Literature. It will happen in those brittle and fleeting moments when a writer suddenly and unexpectedly connects with a reader. Horror will be scary when the turn of a phrase keeps us awake at night, wondering what we would do…when the formula catches up with what we believe –and fear – is possible.

Until then, read The Best. And keep demanding better. We will get there again.