Telling people that you’re a writer gets a mixed reaction from many
people. Mostly what I get is: “So, you’re going to be the next JK
Rowling then?” I’m pretty sure that if I had a pound for every
time someone said that to me, I’d be growing closer to her fortune
by the day.
But then comes the
inevitable question: “What do you write?”
I’m a woman. I
have long hair. I wear lots of skirts and dresses (because I have a
bad back and trousers play hell with it). I’m a mother. I’m a
Girl Guide leader of 15 years standing. They’re not expecting me to
say: “I write horror and dark fiction.”
Their reaction is
often surprised and their response is usually a variant of: “Oh,
you look too nice to write horror.”
But that’s the
thing: anyone can write horror. Writing horror doesn’t make you a
bad person, and it’s not bad people who write horror.
However, that seems
to go against popular opinion. I know many of my fantasy, sci-fi, and
romance acquaintances happily share their latest publication with
their family and friends. When I’ve got a new book coming out, I
usually send out an email to family and friends saying: “Hey. I’ve
written a book. It’s here, but you probably won’t like it.
There’s a lot of blood and death and horror in it.”
I’ve had family
members say to me that they can’t understand why I write horror
because they think that I’m “too nice to write stuff like that.”
But here’s something I’ve learned about the horror industry: the
writers of the most terrifying, gory, and obscene books are actually
some of the loveliest people you’ll ever meet. When in horror, you
really do not judge a person by their books.
Adam Nevill’s
books are terrifying and, in some cases, frighteningly plausible. I
couldn’t finish Apartment 16 because I read it when pregnant
and it made my morning sickness worse. Yet when I had travelled from
Leeds to Brighton via one bus, two trains, and while six months
pregnant to get to a convention, Adam Nevill was the only person I
met on that journey who saw how exhausted and ill I was and offered
to help.
Priya Sharma is an
up and coming horror writer who gets plaudits wherever she goes.
She’s one of the loveliest, chattiest people I’ve ever met,
someone who always asks after my mother and my daughter when we meet
up. I’d swap muffin recipes with her as much as I’d ask her to
brainstorm unpleasant ways to kill off characters.
Jim McLeod is a
large, well-built Scotsman who runs the Ginger Nuts of Horror and is
one of the people that I have, on occasions, made a bee-line for when
I’ve been at a convention and some arse is making unwelcome
advances. I feel absolutely safe in his presence.
And those are just
three examples I could list out of dozens of lovely people I know in
the horror genre.
Horror isn’t
written by complete psychopaths but by genuinely nice people. Which,
I guess, leads the question of “why do such nice people write
horror?”
One of my daughter’s
six-year-old friends once asked me why anyone would want to write
horror, adding, “I don’t like being scared.”
And I told him that
the reason people write horror stories is the same reason that people
used to tell fairy tales: as a means to develop and grow within a
safe environment. We use tales and horror stories to examine terrible
situations that can – and do – occur in life, and by examining
them in fiction, we can feel more confident about how to deal with
trauma in real life.
In the modern world,
we live relatively sheltered lives, but we’re only ever a few steps
away from death, disease, and disaster. Before vaccines, there were
so many ways in which you could die; today, many diseases have been
eradicated, but there’s always the fear that, one day, something
will crop up that is fast, deadly, and can’t be vaccinated against.
Apocalypse fiction explores this fear and, by journeying with the
characters, we can hope that some might survive – and that some of
those survivors might be us.
For most of human
history, dying relatives have passed away at home. Just because we
have hospitals and care homes right now where the terminally ill can
be looked after, doesn’t mean we aren’t still frightened of the
thought of death in our own houses.
Horror is for those
with open minds, who want to be aware of the risks inherent in the
world around them. For a comedic take on this, rent out that old
classic film Scream and watch how a bunch of teenagers try to
enact and survive their own horror scenario. They use horror movies
as a blueprint of what to do and not to do in the event of someone
trying to kill you.
For a more recent
and serious examination of this, read Christina Henry’s The Girl
In Red, where the protagonist finds that while her knowledge of
horror movies can help her be prepared in a crisis, such knowledge
can work against her. She doesn’t take risks that might be crucial
because she knows exactly what happens to the solitary girl who goes
into that apparently abandoned building...
My writing often
focusses on fairy tales, because I feel they, too, are sanitised by
modern society. For example, at the end of Snow White, the evil queen
is not vanquished by the prince, but turns up at the wedding and is
forced to dance in red hot iron shoes until she is dead. And while
Little Red Riding Hood might escape from the wolf, it’s through her
own cunning and not in the form of a saviour huntsman – and, in
some retellings, she ends up eating her own grandmother as part of a
stew first.
Our current society
might have distanced itself from death and terrible deeds, but it’s
still necessary to visit such dark places in our minds. Reading and
watching horror teaches us how to survive the worst of humanity and
nature, and can ultimately prepare us for whatever life throws in our
way. Writing horror isn’t about getting joy from terrifying people;
it’s about reminding them of the terrors that society has hidden
away. Terrifying the reader is just an added bonus.
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