New Gemma Files Collection: In That Endlessness, Our End

Gemma Files is an amazing writer.

If you know anything about horror, you should already know this.

If you didn't know, then now you do.

She has a new collection out. 

It will be very good. 

Because it's by Gemma Files.

You can buy it here.

And you should.

So now you know. 

COME CLOSER, FRIEND.

LET ME TELL YOU A STORY.

Heard the one about the Airbnb that eats your dreams, or the iron-crowned king who preys on his own bloodline from the air, still smoldering centuries after being burnt alive? How about the cloudy antique bottle you can wish your excess rage inside, or that crooked alley down which something waits to replace your disappointing child with a far more pleasant facsimile? We all know the truth, especially in times like these—in an anxiety-ridden, sleepless world such as ours, it’s only ever our very worst dreams that come true.

Here streets empty out and people pull themselves apart like amoebas, breeding murderous doppelgangers from their own flesh; houses haunt, ideas possess and a cold and alien moon stares down, whispering that it’s time to spawn. New myths rise and ancient evils descend. From the seemingly mundane terrors of a city just like yours to all the most dark and distant places of a truly terrible universe, nothing is as it seems…not even that dimly-recalled cinematic memory you’ve been chasing all these years, the one you think might be just something you stumbled upon while flipping through channels after midnight. The one that still disturbs you enough to raise a cold sweat all over your body, whenever you try to will its details clear.

Hot on the heels of her This Is Horror Award-winning short story collection Spectral Evidence, critically horror author Gemma Files compiles fifteen more of her most startling recent nightmares—a creepily seductive downward spiral of dark poetry and existential dread, entirely suitable to the slow apocalypse going on all around us. So take your mind off your troubles and send it somewhere the rules still operate, if only to punish those who violate them.

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Table of Contents

This is How It Goes

Bulb

The Puppet Motel

Come Closer

Cut Frame

Sleep Hygiene

Always After Three

Thin Cold Hands

Venio

Look Up

The Church in the Mountains

Distant Dark Places

Worm Moon

Halloo

Cuckoo

Women In Horror Month: Dani Brown on Time Vampires and the Illusion of Support (Part Two)

Suitably labelled “The Queen of Filth”, extremist author Dani Brown’s style of dark and twisted writing and deeply disturbing stories has amassed a worrying sized cult following featuring horrifying tales such as “Becoming,” “56 Seconds”, “Sparky the Spunky Robot” and the hugely popular “Ketamine Addicted Pandas”. Merging eroticism with horror, torture and other areas that most authors wouldn’t dare, each of Dani’s titles will crawl under your skin, burrow inside you, and make you question why you are coming back for more.

("I don’t think I’ve ever touched on finding the time to write when you’re a women and so much else is demanded of you," Dani told me when I invited her to write a guest blog for WIHM. "Would that work as a topic?"

Yes, it would. And does. So here's the concluding part of it.)

Overnight

I doubt this is a specific to women or transwomen issue, but there are some people that seem to think I write a novel overnight. There was this one creep/weirdo who wouldn’t leave me alone when I first moved to this city. He told me a “great” idea he had. I said, “oh I already wrote that”. He came to bother me the next day and I had that novel out and he tried to take credit for the idea. I can’t remember the exact word count, it was long, somewhere between 70-80k, but even for someone who writes a lot very quickly when I’m in the right flow that is impossible.

You need to help me.

This is a very specific incident that happened sometime between January and June 2018. I can’t remember the exact month as I was either recovering from post traumatic stress disorder, writing 56 Seconds and Becoming (according to readers, these are two of the best things I’ve ever written, Sparky the Spunky Robot remains my favourite), or dealing with creeps who thought five months single was long enough (it really wasn’t).

This weirdo was associating with my group of friends briefly. I had a lot of books released during the first half of 2018, with two more to follow in July and August of that year. Each one of those books had to be promoted as well. This weirdo demanded my help in writing a book. He basically wanted me to write a book for him then he’d put his name on it and get all the money (which doesn’t really exist for a first book). Apparently it was my social obligation to help him (or write for him) because he cranked up the emotional manipulation. For all those years I couldn’t report emotional manipulation, I am well tuned to it and have no tolerance for it. I explain that I’m a single mother, I have to write my own books, I have chores to do, bills to pay, a day job and a vague resemblance of a social life. I don’t have the time. Again, he turns up the emotional manipulation.

I eventually posted a status on Facebook stating what I have to do each day and why I’m not available to help anyone and how I get no help. A family member jumps on stating, “your sister lives there” (half my family live in the USA). My sister lives two and a half hours away by car. Why on earth should my sister jump in her car to come wash dishes I’m perfectly capable of washing myself if I don’t help this person emotionally manipulating me? Even if she lived next door, that is an unreasonable demand. She has her own life.

I have a pretty set schedule to ensure I get through what I need to do each day. Plus my son was still in primary school and having a really rough time of it between the terrible teachers and bullying, mixed messages from pretty much everyone about how his mother wastes her life trying to have a career. My son’s mental health is a priority for me, not someone who thinks he’s entitled to my time because he can emotionally manipulate. If I don’t do the household chores to cater to other people’s demands instead, I’m only going to end up in the same situation I was in a few years ago – living in squalor with more people demanding my time and attention as my life falls apart around me. I can’t even often help people I’m more inclined to help or people I’m physically and mentally capable of helping due to my lack of time.

Running a Household

As much as I wished self-cleaning houses exist, they don’t. Plus there’s budgeting, sometimes with very little money. The less money there is, the more mentally taxing and time consuming it becomes. Then the cooking. This isn’t even considering parenting. These are the basic things that need to be done every single day. Every time I was in a relationship, the weight of these things fell on me. The weight of these things often falls on women. It is a lot easier since being single.

Congratulations if you have a partner who is helping you out with all of these things so you can write. I don’t have that. I have never had that. I don’t get the support with these things that people seem to think I have. And they all need to be done. I can’t leave dishes to pile up on the counter tops. For a start they go a bit crusty and become harder to wash, but eventually I’d run out of dishes and in the summer they’d attract insects. It isn’t exactly hygienic either. Floors need to be washed for the same reasons. Don’t get me started on having a filthy bathroom. I have no one to do these things for me. My son helps out to an extent but it is unfair to expect him to do everything.

I’ve let the dusting slip these past few weeks to sort out this novel, plus one I’m self publishing and the next novel and to see if I can sell some of these unpublished short stories on my laptop. I haven’t been trying to replace a lost to post traumatic stress freelance client who proved very lucrative to focus on getting these things done but that does create extra budgeting as my money supply dwindles (rather obviously, I haven’t been able to build up any savings with all these demands on my time from people who think they know best). I know in the long term, these things will have a better pay out than freelance and dusting. My son seems unbothered by the lack of dusting and that is something he can do if he really wants.

There’s a much higher mental pay out too, both while I’m working on it and in the future when I don’t have to do as much freelance to try to make up for time lost to the people mentioned above. Time lost is money lost. It is life lost. It is friendships lost. Dreams lost.

Finding the Time

Even in lockdown, I have found it difficult to find the time to sort out the beginning of this novel. I eventually did it between the hours of midnight and four in the morning. It wasn’t something I could break into fifteen minute chunks like the rest of the novel. It needed to be done in one sitting with a clear and rested mind. Every time I would sit there to see to it, I would then have to do something else, like cook dinner.

The health problem I mentioned a few times is one of those that keeps me awake with discomfort at night. It has been playing up lately. With it being lockdown I’ve been making up for lost sleeping and sleeping well into the afternoon. Although my life is specifically arranged for me being a late riser, this is ridiculous even by my standards. I’ve been trying to go to bed earlier, but the middle of the night was the only time I could find where I’d get a good chunk of peace. A decent amount of sleep is all part of self-care. I sacrificed it once before, I’m not doing that again. I’m still feeling the effects of those 5AM starts now and probably won’t fully recover.

My son is lost to the Playstation Network, especially right now as it is half term so all the children will be online all week. This is the only way they can socialise and play with each right now. It would be nice to watch a film with him when the schoolwork starts coming in again. Time with my son is never time wasted. That is something all these other people that demand my time need to understand. My son is a priority. It isn’t his fault these people come along and feel they are entitled to my time. He understands that rent needs to be paid and if I don’t get the work done, we won’t have a place to live. It is something the adults around us fail to comprehend. He has witnessed first hand people claiming to love him or look out for him swallowing my time so it comes down to choice between paying the rent or spending time with him.

So I’m hoping to make a significant impact on this novel this week while my child is busy socialising. That should be easier now the beginning is done enough to move on. I’m a quick writer. 56 Seconds took two-three weeks to write. While I was writing that, I wrote notes for Becoming and it took five weeks to form those into a narrative that made sense (it isn’t a traditional one). I learned how to be speedy while trapped in the bulk of time-consuming people inflicting help on me. Sometimes my books require a lot of concentration to make sense. Becoming certainly did and this book I’m writing now requires just as much concentration even if the narrative is more on the traditional side.

And now it is time to cook dinner again. At least it is leftovers tonight. That’s easier than prying the Playstation controller away from my son’s hand.  

Dani on Facebook

Dani on Twitter

Dani on Instagram. 

Unfortunately, Dani Brown has yet to find the time to set up a TikTok account or sort out YouTube, let alone anymore obscure social media.

Dani on Amazon USA 

Dani on Amazon UK 

Women In Horror Month: Dani Brown on Time Vampires and the Illusion of Support (Part One)

Suitably labelled “The Queen of Filth”, extremist author Dani Brown’s style of dark and twisted writing and deeply disturbing stories has amassed a worrying sized cult following featuring horrifying tales such as “Becoming,” “56 Seconds”, “Sparky the Spunky Robot” and the hugely popular “Ketamine Addicted Pandas”. Merging eroticism with horror, torture and other areas that most authors wouldn’t dare, each of Dani’s titles will crawl under your skin, burrow inside you, and make you question why you are coming back for more. 

("I don’t think I’ve ever touched on finding the time to write when you’re a women and so much else is demanded of you," Dani told me when I invited her to write a guest blog for WIHM. "Would that work as a topic?"

Yes, it would. And does. So here it is.)

For the past few days I’ve been trying to clean up the beginning of a novel. This is during a lockdown so I can’t even go outside and therefore, I’m not being roped into any dramas or being told what to do by people convinced they are helping me fix my life that wasn’t broken until people started inflicting help on me. Every time I sat down to clean it up I found myself being called to do something else. It had me thinking of all the times people expected me to somehow stretch the hours in the day and make it longer.

“If it was really that important, you’d find the time.”

An ex of mine had a favourite saying. “If it was really that important, you’d find the time.” And eventually I would find the time and then he’d come up with some crazy scheme, usually involving me going online and Facebook chatting to people I don’t know and don’t want in my life, or dragging me along somewhere, or shouldering his emotional weight. So it wasn’t my found time to begin with. He’d claim it. If I put up an objection, it would descend into a time consuming argument and I would end up even more stressed than I was already, with less time. Then he’d start to pick on me for not having any money. I’d explain that money needs to be earned, it doesn’t just magically appear. I’d then go through the effort of explaining to him with evidence of what I was doing to earn money and how I can’t keep getting roped into doing things that I don’t want to do in the first place. Then he’d sit there and respond with “we need to find out where all this stress is coming from” after I had literally explained it to him. I had taken my time to dig out evidence of what I was doing and go through point by point of what I was doing or trying to do if I wasn’t dealing with all this other stuff that was not necessary to my life.

To be honest, that ex is like a lot of people who all demand a piece of time and if they don’t get it, they will go to get lengths to cause maximum stress and then say, “see I told you that you couldn’t do it”. People do not like a single mother with boundaries and career that brings her happiness. I speak to other women in the creative industries and they all have these stories.

By this point I was waking up at 5AM every week day to have an hour and a half to write before I would have to get my son up for school and trek via one bus and one train to a day job on the other side of the city that left me feeling suicidal.

I would also use my time on public transport to write. I ended up sticking a letter to my laptop stating I was writing a novel, have a publisher and already know about self-publishing, please leave me alone because people would see it fit to ask what I was doing. It wasn’t any of their business to begin with. These minor distractions all add up. Each time I was taken away from my story it would take at least two minutes to get back into the flow of things, depending on how long the distraction lasted and how mentally taxing it was. During this time, I couldn’t write the experimental pieces where my heart was. A lot of the short stories were just written to say, “see I’m trying”. I did turn out some gems in this time, but some of the stuff I wrote then, I’m embarrassed that it was published.

“Where there’s a will there’s a way.”

Not only am I expected to stretch the day to make extra hours magically appear I also I have to somehow alter space and the laws of the land while getting people to conform to my will. It doesn’t happen. And if my relationships fail, it is entirely my fault because if there’s a will to not be single, then there’s a way and the man’s happiness is entirely dependent upon me (finding the time for stuff that’s important to me) and women can’t be single (please notice my sarcasm here).

It isn’t just family that drive me crazy and take my time with this one. When my son was in primary school and his father alive I was expected to get my son’s father to behave in a functional way. Attempts to control people are a) abusive and b) more stress than it is worth. That’s people who do not have an underlying issue. In my son’s father’s case, he had borderline personality disorder (amongst other problems that no one wishes to disclose to me). So somehow, that became my responsibility too, while trying to write books and maybe generate some freelance work so I can quit the day job that left me feeling suicidal, shouldering the weight of my ex’s emotions, catering to the needs of his friends while loosing contact with mine, managing an increasingly worse health problem that wasn’t taken seriously by the NHS until about two years ago (now medicated but still no diagnosis, I think it is a biopsy next, but COVID), trying to earn enough money to just get by and handling what had turned into post traumatic stress disorder and raising a child with no access to child care. I already went through this same cycle with my mother, minus having a child of my own and I didn’t have PTSD back, but did suffer from the impact of chronic stress. I didn’t want to go through it again.

That shouldn’t happen.

This is one I hear quite frequently. No, that shouldn’t happen, but it does. Dismissing something because it shouldn’t happen only sweeps it under the rug, leaving the person dealing with whatever it is with more stress and less time.

I have talked extensively about sexual harassment on my social media, website and in person. That shouldn’t happen, but it does. Ignoring for a minute the mental impact of dealing with some creep who feels a one-sided connection, breaking away from the aforementioned creep is time consuming. It can also be physically dangerous so it has to be done in a careful manner. Each creep takes time to deal with.

These are men that feel they are entitled to a woman’s time. I could be simply going about my day, thinking of what task I have to do next before I can write and then boom, some creep appears as if he is God’s gift to women and empty sex.

I can’t complain about what physical impact these creeps have on my life before the mental effects because “you shouldn’t equate sex and money” (yes that was actually said to me), even if the creep is certainly not getting any from me and if I don’t do the writing or sell the books or generate the freelance work, I’m not paying the rent. If I’m not paying the rent, then me and my son are homeless. It is as simple as that.

Speaking of paying the rent, there have been an awful lot of people in my life that think money magically appears out of thin air and I’m setting a bad example for my son by working and having a career. Instead of leaving me alone to live my life and make things better for me and my son, they let their feelings known. These people all need to be dealt with, often with kid gloves like the creeps. It wasn’t until three years ago that I could phone the police on them as that only led to more very time consuming and stressful problems, especially from people that are well versed in both emotional manipulation and knowing how to manipulate the system. Dealing with this is more time lost.

Do you still write those little stories?

Yes, yes I do. Those little stories have paid the rent or a bill or put food in my fridge on more than one occasion. Freelance writing and lately visual art picks up the slack. I was hardly breaking even with a more traditional job, one that left me suicidal, stressed and the health problem worse.

I don’t have the time, even now, or the energy to argue with this. Speaking to other women, women authors write “little stories” while men write “epic novels” and should be congratulated for the effort they put in and all the sacrifices they make.

I still have two day job clients left for those times I can’t generate the freelance or my post traumatic stress disorder is so bad I can’t fill an order and end up loosing a freelance client. One of them takes it upon herself to continuously blow up my phone. Turns out it is illegal to hack the phone of someone who insisted a day job would fix my life and make me feel good about myself despite my protests so they can receive the messages instead. Those messages, even when I ignore them, take time away from when I could be writing. They also push my stress levels right up, even though she knows I reported her to the council for them. The time devoted to calming down with my phone insistently beeping is more lost writing.

Even now, three years after I proved that writing and art is the only way to improve my life, I get people telling me to go back into health care. Not what I specifically trained in either, but nursing. These are more people that need to be dealt with, taking time away from when I could be improving my life or improving my writing. And if it is not nursing, it is fifty million other things that would take time to train in and time to then work my way up in that world leaving me back at square one and further into my overdraft. Absolutely nothing pays off instantly. Every single job there is out there takes time to train in and work up in.

And I do not want to. I like writing. I like visual art. I have a half finished circuit bending project on my dinning room table that needs my time and attention so I can slowly expand into sound effects. Why should I change my career again to satisfy other people? Nothing I do will ever be good enough, so why not just leave me alone to be not good enough? At least I’m happy being not good enough. Being not good enough alone doesn’t suck away my time.

But, I guess, women and creative industries is an unbelievable combination or attention seeking. I get those two pretty often. Random people laugh when I excuse myself because I’m writing a book and then say, “you will let me know when this book of yours is out”. I respond with “check out my other books, they’re all on amazon” and bring up my amazon author page on my phone. They’re speechless after. This takes less time than explaining the writing and publishing process. The people who think women creatives are attention seeking or doing it to get laid are harder to deal with. I still haven’t found an effective way beyond telling them that I’ll report them to the police for harassment if they don’t let me get on with my day (pretty difficult when it was my son’s primary school doing it, but it sometimes works on others and if not, then I have to go through the time consuming process of filing a report with the police).

I don’t have “bank of mom and dad” sponsoring me. Even if my father was in a position to pay my way, why should he? I’m in my mid-30s now. I’m not a teenager anymore. I have a degree, which he partially paid for. Now is the time to work in the field I’m qualified in and pay my own way. It has been the time since I handed in my final assignment for my degree way back in 2008.

The concluding part of Dani's article appears on this blog tomorrow. 

Dani on Facebook

Dani on Twitter

Dani on Instagram. 

Unfortunately, Dani Brown has yet to find the time to set up a TikTok account or sort out YouTube, let alone anymore obscure social media.

Dani on Amazon USA 

Dani on Amazon UK

Women In Horror: Gemma Files

So here's the thing with Women in Horror Month—I mean, beyond the same conversation we've been having about anything earmarked For Women since I was literally in high school (Random High School Guy: “But why do we even need a Women's Day?” Girl Whose Name I Can't Remember, speaking for every other girl in the class: “Because every day is Man's Day, asshole.”). I mean, I certainly know it works for me, and always has...it's a spotlight aimed at fellow female-identifying creators, something I can use to bring forth those I feel have been forgotten or overlooked while simultaneously discovering new reading/viewing/listening matter for myself, along with new potential friends, fans and allies.

As we move further into the 2020s, however, what with the very idea of gender becoming a far more culturally slippery thing than it used to be, I have to wonder if slapping the word “women” on WiHM doesn't end up accidentally excluding people beyond the traditionally privileged white/cis/straight/male default—people who might well be just as eager to consume and create horror, if only we were a bit more welcoming with our labels?

A (slightly) older cis white lady friend of mine and I were chatting the other day, when she suddenly asked me, as if she really thought I was more likely to know: “Why do you think so many young people these days don't seem to want to be men or women anymore? I mean...like how sometimes they say they're male one day and female the next, and maybe nothing the day after that? Why do you think that is?” To which I replied, without even really thinking about it much beforehand: “Well, look at how polarized and toxic and stressful identifying as either sex is, these days—performative heterosexuality, gender-essentialism, biological determinism, people constantly policing each other's fantasies like thinking of something is the same as doing it. Who the hell wouldn't choose to opt out of that whole mess, if they really believed it was possible?”

And given my age—I was born in 1968, y'all—I'm sure some part of how I just expressed myself up there sounds like I'm minimizing or dismissing genderqueer and non-binary people's identities, for which I apologize, because that truly wasn't my intention; I'm very aware that almost everything is a spectrum, not least since I'm already on at least one of those myself, if not more. It's simply that I envy anybody who can actually persuade themselves it's an option to life hack one's way around the bigender ties that bind, especially in a world so goddamned bent on making sure we all fall neatly on either the pink or blue side of things.

For some people, it means a lot to be identified as a woman, so much so that they've fought for it. But for me it's Tuesday, because being a woman was handed to me at birth: AFAB, and ever after. Not to mention how, much as I love to roleplay as someone I'm not and cisswap the characters I supposedly shouldn't be able to imagine myself inside just because of the fact that I once cooked an entire larval human being almost to term inside my uterus, I just don't think I'll ever be able to free myself entirely from looking at life through a gendered frame. Which doesn't mean I'm sitting here in the corner muttering about kids getting off my lawn or plaintively wondering aloud why everything these days has to be so gosh-darn COMPLICATED, either...just that I often find myself wondering about not just women in horror, but gender in horror. Is it necessary? Is it escapable?

Whenever I think about the “necessity” of gendered horror, my mind always goes back to that highly-applicable Margaret Atwood quote about the difference between men's and women's fears, most recently in context with this particular article, which caused me to reblog it and comment: “Men are afraid that women [won't stop laughing] at them. Women are afraid men will kill them.” But that's just the surface, as ever; there are female-identifying narcissists just as quick to hammer down on anyone who tries to puncture their toxic sense that only they truly exist, and while a lot of them tend to do it a bit more slyly than the guy in the article, some of them don't. There are also male-identifying people who spent their lives well aware that if they step out of line socially, if they give anyone around them the impression that they aren't living up to the right sort of masculine standard, they risk either being murdered, or being made into a murderer. And then there are the people who feel like they're both at once, or neither, or whatever—do you think they aren't sometimes made hopeless and hateful by ridicule that denies and denigrates who they literally are, or immersed in a terror that seems inescapable over the prospect of being “found out” and eradicated by the very culture that surrounds them?

Self-policing is very much a thing, after all, and if someone's allowed to get away with being the “wrong” sort of man or woman, then what does that make the rest of us bigendered folks? Just people, I guess. Which is, for some reason or other, apparently not enough.

Or, to put it another way—pronouns aside, we're all pretty much afraid of the same shit, and that doesn't change. Which is why, whenever default-adhering people ask me why I feel like I have to “shoehorn” diversity into my/their horror, I find myself answering: “Because life is diverse, and everyone deserves to be able to find themselves reflected in the media they consume.”

Now, back when I started writing horror, in the later 1980s/early 1990s, I had three quote-quote female role-models: Kathe Koja, Caitlin R. Kiernan and Poppy Z. Brite. Brite is now Billy Martin, and just as awesome as he always was; when I first heard about his transition, I thought: “Ah, this explains a lot about our shared interests.” But never have I ever had the figurative-to-literal balls to follow the knowledge that I LOVE to write about guys fucking each other from those guys' POV up by thinking: “So obviously I'm a gay guy, and I should probably do something about that.” Because I'm just not, and never will be. Billy is, and always was, the same was Caitlin's a queer woman, and always was. The same way Kathe and I are...whatever we are.

“Identity” is a bit of a difficult word for writers, I think—no matter the genre they're drawn to—because, to some degree, of its similarity to word “identify.” I get to place myself inside the people I write, which is my joy, my both-senses-of-the-word privilege; I get to think myself into patterns of thought, emotion and experience I both share and don't share, to wear those identities for a while and then discard them when the story I'm telling is “done,” and walk back into my own life grinning. If I do it well, I sometimes get praise, and that's beautiful; if I do it badly I get criticism, and I should. My intent, aside from simple narrative creation, is to hopefully create characters that my readers can enjoy seeing themselves in, or be surprised by seeing themselves in. But can I also damage other people, real people with real lives, by briefly pretending to inhabit an identity they exist inside every moment of every IRL day in order to usher readers through a fictional beginning, middle and end?

Much like pronoun protocol—“Are we just supposed to call people whatever they hell they tell us they want to be called, now?” “Um, yes. Yes, that is pretty much exactly how things are now supposed to go.”—I simply have to accept that this idea, however odd it may seem to me based on when I was born and what I was taught, is true. And that as much as I never mean to, the mere fact that I work primarily in a genre which deals with disturbance, offence, pain, means that I will disturb someone, offend someone, hurt someone. It's inevitable. I'll wound someone, and that wound—however fictional its cause—will have to be treated as if it's exactly as real as they feel it to be. Not only can I not debate the concept, at this point in my life, I don't even want to.

So here we are, women of all sorts alike and everybody else likewise: mutually responsible for both the harm we might do and the care we owe ourselves in turn, on either side of the page. As we always were, most probably, but now we have almost enough language to try to acknowledge it directly, along with—hopefully—the moral willpower to do so. “An outsider knows an Outsider,” as Holly Gibney says; we've all been called monsters by somebody, after all, just like we all know how we want to be treated, especially while still carrying deep wounds from being treated the exact opposite way. Just like we all know how it can feel, the sheer power of the term: awful in every sense, elevating, denigrating.

And yes, change can feel hard, but this? It seems far easier than most people seem to want to treat it, to me. Like a conversation I'm fine with having as many times as I need to so long as it helps me get back to telling stories in the dark, any given month of any given year, ad infinitum. There being so many far scarier things to discuss, after all, than how the people you're telling stories about refer to themselves.

Women In Horror: Charlotte Bond

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. 

Women In Horror: Keris McDonald

I’m Keris McDonald, horror/fantasy writer. And I’m Janine Ashbless, writer of erotica — both
hardcore and romantic. In fact until recently all my social media presence was under the “Janine” name and I’ve only Come Out on Facebook in the last few weeks, after I got a gig writing for the Chaosium games company.

So I've been thinking about Erotica v. Horror. Two separate genres, though clearly there is a potential overlap, as there is between all forms of genre fiction. I actually started out my career writing horror, then switched to erotica for many years (thus, incidentally, working my way down the literary pecking order. Some big name horror writers do write the smutty stuff, or have done in the past. But they like to keep that a secret). Nowadays I seem to be veering back toward horror somewhat.

The two genres actually have a whole lot in common, I believe:

1. People outside your genre assume you’re some dodgy weirdo who can’t separate their fiction from real life and probably shouldn’t be left alone with small children or pets. Yet when you meet fellow authors it turns out that pretty much everyone inside the genre is unassuming, shy and rather kind.
2. The plot structure is often similar for both genres. They both work really well (best, many might say) as short stories. In both Horror and Erotica the ideal is to end at the dramatic (or literal) climax, with no cooling off period. In longer fiction the aim is to create an ascending ladder of excitement in the reader's mind, based on set-piece scenes interspersed with tension-ratcheting lulls.
3. The author above all aims to evoke a visceral reaction - whether fear or arousal. The best horror or erotica stories bypass the rational brain and go straight to the body. They make the heart race (in both cases) and they make the skin crawl or the genitals swell. These are primaeval responses designed to cope with crisis real-life stimuli, and to be able to evoke these reactions by the written word alone takes a surprising amount of skill. You are wresting control from the reader - and that thrill is exactly what fans like.
4. Because this is a stimulus-response reaction, even the most keen readers in both genres can become jaded. This may lead authors toward a dangerous trap of making the stimulus stronger (MORE BLOOD AND GUTS! / BIGGER ORGIES! HUGE STRAP-ONS!), but this is not a game the writer can win in the long run. Far better, in my opinion, to sneak up on the reader with something they hadn't anticipated, and reveal to them the depths of their vulnerability. If you can convince readers of the devastating allure of a hole in a woollen stocking (like in The Piano) or the terror inherent in a closed door (like in The Monkey's Paw), then you are doing it right as a writer.
5. Both genres are inherently subversive. They aim to convince you to suspend your faith in the laws of society, in the normal tropes of interaction between people, and to accept - temporarily - that there might be other, often more powerful and dangerous, possibilities. They both say "What if the world didn't work the way people tell you it does?" Both genres draw their power from overturning social consensus and restrictions.

Keris McDonald’s short stories have been published in Supernatural Tales, All Hallows and Weird Tales magazines, and in the anthologies At Ease with the Dead, Shades of Darkness, Hauntings, Impossible Spaces, The Alchemy Press Book of Horrors, Genius Loci, Dark Voices, Terror Tales of Yorkshire, The Scent of Tears, Legends vol. 3, and The Forgotten and the Fantastical Vol.5. Her story “The Coat Off His back” was picked up for Ellen Datlow’s Best Horror of the Year #7. She is one-third of Lovecraftian collection The Private Life of Elder Things.

Keris lives in Yorkshire with her husband, dogs and library. She’s a keen table-top-roleplayer and LARPer and has just worked out she’s been playing Dungeons and Dragons for forty years now. Her mother has given up expecting better of her.

If you are interested in reading examples of Keris’ erotica that she’d class as horror too, try:

Lord Montague's Last Ride in Cruel Enchantment

Cold Hands, Warm Heart in Dark Enchantment

At Usher's Well in Fierce Enchantments

and Red Grow the Roses.

Women In Horror: Catherine Cavendish on Playing The Devil's Games

Earlier this month, I extended an open invite to any women working in the horror genre to contribute a guest blog. One respondent was Catherine Cavendish, who features today with a piece about her new novel, The Garden Of Bewitchment. Read on...

The Garden of Bewitchment is a demonic toy in my new novel of the same name and those who encounter it have some unpleasant and scary experiences. They get caught up in its devilish devices until nothing is as it appears to be and sanity comes at a premium.

They didn’t have a choice. YOU, on the other hand, do. It’s up to you whether you decide to draw the curtains and curl up on a winter’s evening, with a nice cosy book or movie – or take a walk on the wilder side and go on a supernatural adventure of your own. As I said, it is entirely YOUR choice…

Ah, I see you’re still here, that must mean you have decided to play. Proceed by all means, but remember, the devil extracts a price and he isn’t too particular who pays…or how…and he changes the rules to suit himself.

Red Book

Here’s a nice little fortune telling game from South America. For this you will need a quiet room, a group of trusted friends, and the following equipment:

A red hardback book containing all text – no pictures or images of any kind

One or more red candles

Matches or lighter

A question

Off you all go into your quiet room and draw the curtains. Light your candle(s) and turn off all other sources of light.

Sit in a circle and set the candle(s) in the centre

As leader, you start the proceedings. Your friends will copy your actions, one by one.

Close your eyes and place the palm of one hand on the book’s cover, ask out loud, “Red Book, may I enter your game?”

Keeping your eyes tight shut, open the book at a random page and place your finger somewhere on the page. Open your eyes and read out loud the sentence your finger has landed on. You now have your answer. Interpret it carefully before proceeding.

If the answer is negative or you cannot make any sense of it at all, contact has not been made and you must start over. If the answer is positive, you may proceed by passing the book to the next person who will follow the same instructions. Keep going until each player has asked for and received permission to enter the game.

Now you can ask your question. Close your eyes, place your palm on the book’s cover and ask it out loud.

Keep your eyes closed. Open the book randomly as before and place your finger somewhere on the page. Open your eyes, read the sentence your finger has landed on and do your best to interpret it. Each player will repeat this until all have asked their question and received the answer (whatever they have made of it).

When all questions have been asked/answered, close your eyes and place your palm on the book cover once again. Ask aloud, “Red Book, may I leave the game?”

Repeat the sequence as before, with eyes closed, open the book at a random page and place your finger somewhere on the page. Open your eyes, read the sentence out loud and, if positive, you may leave the game. If negative or nonsensical, you may not leave the game and must repeat the sequence again until your answer indicates that you may depart. Each person in the group then repeats the sequence until each has successfully left the game.

When all have departed, close the book. Blow out the candles and, lastly open the curtains and turn on the lights.

There. Nice and innocent isn’t it? Unless you break any of the rules of course. No, I’m not telling you. You really don’t want to know what happens then.

Ready for another one? Then let’s play…

Candyman

Yes, I know there’s a film of the same name. But did you know it was based on a real incident? The murder of Ruthie Mae McCoy was carried out by someone entering her apartment through the bathroom cabinet, in the Abbott Homes high rises in the Chicago Projects. It would have been entirely possible for a person to gain access this way as the adjoining apartment also had its bathroom cabinet in the same position. You can read more about this fascinating case online, but for now, let’s play the game. It’s really very simple. You’ll need to be alone. In your bathroom. In front of the mirror. Shut the door, switch off the lights, face the mirror and say ‘Candyman’ five times.

The Candyman will appear – and kill you with his hook. Er – right. Well, goodbye then!

Assuming you survived (somehow), let’s play one last game:

11 Mile Road

If you have an all-consuming desire to get something, you may choose this game but you have to have nerves of steel and/or be a complete idiot to try it. You’ll need a car or motorbike of some kind – and you can’t take anyone with you. You’re well and truly on your own, mate.

To find 11 Mile Road, you need to wait until the streets round and about you are deserted, very late at night and drive to a back road inside a forest or dense wood (no, not outside it. Inside.)

Drive around the empty roads or lanes until you know you’ve found 11 Mile Road. Don’t ask me. You’ll just know. Your instinct will tell you. Just keep alert.

Now you’ve found it, think carefully. This is your last chance to turn around and get the hell out of there. Still want to continue? Right:

Don’t listen to music or turn the radio on, don’t open your windows or doors or stop the car - whatever you see or whatever happens - and keep your speed below 30 m.p.h.

You’re now on your eleven mile drive and each mile is significant. Remember, whatever happens, keep driving.

Miles one and two – you may feel a little cold and, if so, you can switch your heater on.

Mile three – movement will begin all around you. Ignore it and don’t take your eyes off the road.

Mile four – voices. Ignore them.

Mile five – the countryside may start to change and become beautiful – a lake with moonlight shimmering on the crystal waters, the forest becoming less dense. It’s so tempting to stop and look. DON’T.

Mile six – the trees become denser once more, any stars will disappear. Your headlights might flicker, the radio may start up, and appear to talk directly to you. Ignore anything and everything and don’t turn off the radio. Remember, you didn’t switch it on.

Mile seven – the voices may seem to be coming from your own back seat. Ignore them. Don’t turn around.

Mile eight – whatever happens, keep driving. If your headlights dim, slow down but never, ever stop.

Mile nine – this is when your car may stall. If it does, do nothing except close your eyes and keep them shut as you wait for the car to start again. When it does, foot down, open your eyes and drive.

Mile ten – don’t look in your mirrors and don’t turn around. This is critical.

Mile eleven – Your vehicle will stall again. This time in front of a red light. Close your eyes. Do not look at the red light. Ignore the voices. Ignore anything that grabs hold of you. Ignore everything, no matter what and keep those eyes shut. Your vehicle will restart and when it does, open your eyes, drive on a little further until you reach a dead end. Stop.

Make your wish. But don’t just wish it, see it, feel it, imagine you already have it. If it is a small item, check your pocket. You can open your eyes so, if it is a larger item, check your back seat or the trunk of your car. If your wish is for something bigger than that or something that isn’t material, drive back home and it will come to you very soon.

And that’s all there is to it. Of course, there is always a price. The flashbacks you keep having for the rest of your life and the demonic presence that comes home with you are quite a hefty price to pay. If you’re happy with that, I wish you good fortune.

Don’t play the game.

In 1893, Evelyn and Claire leave their home in a Yorkshire town for life in a rural retreat on their beloved moors. But when a strange toy garden mysteriously appears, a chain of increasingly terrifying events is unleashed. Neighbour Matthew Dixon befriends Evelyn, but seems to have more than one secret to hide. Then the horror really begins. The Garden of Bewitchment is all too real and something is threatening the lives and sanity of the women. Evelyn no longer knows who - or what - to believe. And time is running out. 

Amazon

Flame Tree Press

Barnes and Noble

About Catherine Cavendish

Cat first started writing when someone thrust a pencil into her hand. Unfortunately as she could neither read nor write properly at the time, none of her stories actually made much sense. However as she grew up, they gradually began to take form and, at the tender age of nine or ten, she sold her dolls’ house, and various other toys to buy her first typewriter – an Empire Smith Corona. She hasn’t stopped bashing away at the keys ever since, although her keyboard of choice now belongs to her laptop.

The need to earn a living led to a varied career in sales, advertising and career guidance but Cat is now the full-time author of a number of supernatural, ghostly, haunted house and Gothic horror novels and novellas, including The Haunting of Henderson Close, the Nemesis of the Gods trilogy – Wrath of the Ancients, Waking the Ancients, Damned by the Ancients - The Devil’s Serenade, Dark Avenging Angel, The Pendle Curse, Saving Grace Devine and Linden Manor. Her short stories have appeared in the anthologies Haunted Are These Houses and Midnight in the Graveyard.

She lives in Southport with her long-suffering husband and black cat (who remembers that her species used to be worshipped in ancient Egypt and sees no reason why that practice should not continue).

When not slaving over a hot computer, Cat enjoys rambling around stately homes, circles of standing stones and travelling to favourite haunts such as Vienna and Orkney. 

Catherine Cavendish

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