Celebrating Women Horror Writers

I love horror! I love women horror writers! There, I said it. I know, horror is a man's world, but, dammit, I want to play too. Apparently there are a lot of us out there that really know how to make things bleed, bump in the night, get possessed, get re-possessed, and so on.....

I, personally, love stabby things. It is visceral, up close and personal. None of that gun crap for me. I want to see my victim's life dwindle from their fear-worn eyes. I want to feel the life force pulsate and throb in my hands. Huh. I guess I want to be a surgeon and play God. But that will have to wait for another life.

In this one, I control my fears, my anger, my depression, my outrage and my disgust with pithy sayings with sharp objects. And I like it. In fact, I love it. I control everything in this marvelous little world I create in my head. I control people like marionettes and move the strings.

Writing is difficult. Most people think anyone can do it, and trust me, anyone cannot. I have read terrible poetry, blogs, stories and novels and I sigh. But I guess they are trying. Writing horror is a niche all unto itself because it is about an emotion. There is a cathartic process that happens in horror: the author writes the basis of her fear or stress, and the winds the words along the path in a way that connects with a reader so that the reader is engaged, entertained and, at the same time enthralled in the journey. This is a delicate procedure. It takes a certain finesse to pull this off. You don't need to pull in the romance, or the sex or the gore to write great horror. But you can, if that's how you feel.

I like subtle, realistic horror. Now, anyone that has read what I have written will gasp and delicately dab their upper brow and say, surely those awful things don't exist in this world and I laugh and laugh, because, yeah.............. they do.

Anyone who has ever been a school teacher or a parent or child and lived in the real world for five minutes will have seen the horrors out there. For example, Super Bowl Sunday Weekend will contribute to millions of dollars in the child sex trade and human trafficking. This is the biggest industry since the drug wars.

So, I write horror to take out my frustration on an uncaring and goddless society. And dammit, that makes me happy.