One of the best stories I've read appears in an anthology Bruce and I edited.
"I love writing horror. From the time I was a kid, I’ve
been a huge horror fan. As a matter of fact, my first professional sale was a
poem about a vampire waiting for prey. I really enjoy writing fantasy and
Steampunk, but writing horror gives you the chance to explore a completely
different set of parameters. Writing horror is about exploring the visceral as
opposed to the ephemeral.
Of course, there are different flavors of horror. Some
of my most successful works are a series of humorous horror stories about a
restaurateur named Bruce Vincent and his waitress Roxanne Rogers who battle the
supernatural. They have the sort of camp aesthetic that was often found in the
old comic books, like Tales from the
Crypt and House of Horror which
could vacillate between silly and terrifying in one issue. Of course, Bruce and
Roxanne always come down on the side of silly. Their stories are available from
Yard Dog Press in a new perfect bound edition called Bruce
and Roxanne: From Start to Finnish.
But, much fun as writing the silly stories can be,
writing something seriously scary (or at least attempting it) can be much more
satisfying. There is something exciting about looking beneath the expected
societal norms—and it is more politically correct to do it on paper. It is a
chance to embrace all your darker impulses. The freedom to be as vicious and
cruel as you want without actually hurting anyone.
I’ve written several short pieces that fall into this
category. Some of these are found in the collection By
Candlelight. My favorite serious horror piece to date
though is Bloody
Rain
from Mocha Memoirs—this look at what might really have become of Jack the
Ripper is something I’ve wanted to explore for a long time. It is a solution I
have personally never seen before—and hope you find interesting if you choose
to look into it.
To me, the key to writing horror is to take an incident and look at what can
happen as a result of that incident—the most twisted, dark, possibly unnatural,
but logical conclusion you can think
of. For example, zombies appear in your neighborhood. What happens next? That
is the basis of horror.
I am currently revising the second draft of my first
full length horror novel, Skellyman.
It isn’t easy to sustain the suspense for a long work. I hope to finish it
sometime in the next five years…
If you are interested in trying a bit of horror on
your own, I suggest reading extensively in the genre. Some authors I would
recommend are Anne Rice—you still can’t beat her description; Charlee
Jacob—dark is her specialty…; Tanith Lee—her dark fantasy often skirts the
edges of horror; and, of course, Stephen King, is still the Grand Master—even
if it Women in Horror Month. ;)
Writing horror requires a specific mindset. You have
to immerse yourself in the darkness. But you must also remember it isn’t
someplace you want to dwell eternally. You have to come out of the darkness and
into the light when you finish."
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