BookWenches

Guilty Pleasures 

I have a confession to make. I write horror fiction. Ordinarily, I dress it up as Dark Fiction, Slipstream or my favourite catch-all: Speculative.  If I'm feeling particularly exposed, then I'll find myself muttering something vague like Cross-genre. Why? Because outside of its fan base, the perception of horror is still largely one-dimensional. Forever maligned as some kind of sub-species of writing, its authors are often doomed to relegation behind so-called 'mainstream' or 'literary' fiction.  

But I've always loved horror as a genre. The first book that I can remember reading (aside from the obligatory Famous Five, Secret Seven, Nancy Drew et al), was Edgar Allen Poe's The Cask of Amontillado. I probably remember it so well because it gave me nightmares for weeks afterwards; even as a kid, I was pretty certain that being entombed alive was not the nicest way to go. By next birthday I had the complete abridged young adult's collection of Poe's short fiction - and I loved it to death. 

If you don't consider the likes of Macbeth, Hamlet and Titus Andronicus horror (I do!), then the genre perhaps began with Shelley's Frankenstein and Stoker's Dracula. In the early twentieth century, 'weird fiction' became prevalent: from the ghost stories of MR James and Algernon Blackwood, to the dark fantasy of Lovecraft and Dunsany.

Post World War 2, the 'cosy catastrophe' began to take over. Post-apocalyptic novels like John Christopher's The Death of Grass and John Wyndham's Day of the Triffids are still haunting reads that in my opinion have barely aged at all. 

In my teens, I discovered Stephen King. After reading Misery in high school, I actively sought out everything he'd written before or since. King can certainly be credited with bringing horror to the bestseller lists, but perhaps his better achievement is to have helped alter the perception of horror as being somehow beneath everything else. The same could also be said of writers like James Herbert, Richard Matheson, Ramsey Campbell and Clive Barker - all of whom are unabashed in calling themselves horror writers.   

In the hopes of one day achieving even a fraction of their success, I always try to evoke many more emotions than just one in every horror story that I write. While the action is almost always going to be central and the plot fast-paced, characterisation has to be paramount. Who is going to care about little Johnny's fate, if he is about as engaging as wet flannel? And who comes through what are likely to be pretty nasty experiences unchanged? Those bad B-movies, where scantily-clad cheerleaders run away from deranged masked serial killers into the nearest dead-end; where any indulgence in sexual behaviour will earn you a swift hatchet to the head, or a shuffling attack from a pack of drooling zombies are, if not long gone, then certainly old hat. 

Horror fiction will always be a wonderful genre to write in, because by its very definition it tolerates extremes as well as subtlety. It has the capacity to be moving, sad or romantic because if fear runs high, so do all other emotions. And the stark contrast between terror and humour can be particularly effective. 

Perhaps that is why I love reading it as much as writing it. Horror fiction can hit you in the face with a sledgehammer, or creep up behind you in a darkened room. Either way if it's done well, it stays in your mind a hell of a lot longer than anything else. 

At the end of the day, perhaps the main fault lies in my own prejudices. And in a defensiveness that at times has bordered upon embarrassment at the kind of books I write and the kinds of books I love to read. My favourite horror novel of all time is Ray Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes. For no reason at all other than the fact that it's brilliant and I love it. Sometimes I forget that that's the whole point.  

Many, many thanks to BookWenches for both their fantastic review of my new novella Frenzy, and the invite to guest on their blog today. I look forward to any and all comments and questions!  

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Originally from Lanarkshire, Scotland, Carole now lives in north Essex with her fiancé, Iain, and works part-time as a medical dosimetrist.

A relative newcomer to the world of published fiction, she was first featured in Black Static Magazine in early 2008. Her short stories have, or are due to appear in several anthologies and magazines including Voices, In Bad Dreams Vol.2, Grants Pass, Dead Souls, and PS Publishing's post-apocalyptic anthology, Catastrophia.

Her first novella, Frenzy, was published by Eternal Press in August 2009, and is also available in print paperback from Amazon.

Her website can be found at www.carolejohnstone.com, and she loves to hear from friends old and new and soon-to-be!