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| You are receiving this email from The Writer's Chatroom because you signed up for our announcement list. To ensure that you continue to receive emails from us, add audrey@writerschatroom.com to your address book today. Unsubscribe instructions are at the bottom of the email. |  TWC SPOTLIGHT A Monthly e-Newsletter | | October 2007 Visit the archives at http://archives.zinester.com/58237 | | Letter from the
Editor Happy Haunting! Yes, it's October already. I have no idea where this year went. Time seems to fly by so fast anymore…oops. Is my age showing? Ahem. Let's move on. We've got some great guests coming up this month! Our annual visit from John Everson, a return engagement from Brian Keene, and two new FEMALE horror authors. Two years ago someone complained that "there aren't any women writing horror". I was scrambling last year, and didn't have time to research. But this year, I found them. Two horrifyingly terrific women, Sarah Langan and Mary San Giovanni. Remember those names! You will be hearing from them again. (More on the Schedule page.) People are starting to submit articles for the Spotlight. (See guidelines and editorial calendar.) This month, I got two great ones. Scott Virtes' article was a terrific primer on writing horror, where Peter Tzinski wrote more on the joys of reading horror. I debated, went back and forth and finally realized…I'm the editor! I can run two articles if I want to! So you get to enjoy both. Peter invites us to take off our skin and dance 'round in our bones. That was a line I simply had to share with you all. The Writer's Chatroom
is going to offer advertising space in our mailings. People keep asking, and we finally decided to do it. Once we start selling ad space, we should be able to afford a better mail host for our newsletters. Then everyone who signs up can receive our mailings. That hasn't been happening lately. We aren't going to run ads for subsidy publishers or any other kind of rip-off artists. We appreciate and protect our members. For advertiser info, go here http://www.writerschatroom.com/advertising.htm . We only have one open guest slot for the rest of this year, and I may have that one filled. Linda is booking like crazy
for 2008. Our aim is to bring you the best writers we can find. In 2008, we will be launching some brand-new authors, bringing back a few of our favorite guests, and expanding our genre choices. I've heard a few comments that we don't showcase nearly enough romance authors, so we've declared the entire month of February to be Romance Month. Get ready! If you have an author you would dearly love to meet in our chatroom, please drop me a line at audrey@writerschatroom.com . If you have their website address or contact info, that will make it easier for Linda and I to stalk…um…find them. We're not afraid to chase any guest! Yes, Stephen King has been
emailed more than once. Maybe next October. ;) For those of you who like free stuff, Linda is running an impromptu contest on our blog. But you better hurry! Time is running out. I'm trying to get ready for next week's Muse Conference, so I'll close up for this month. Start your October with the treats from us in this newsletter. Enjoy!Keep writing! Audrey | | Visit our forum. Meet our members. Keep the discussions going after chat. Learn where the hottest markets are for your genre. Find a critique or writing partner. Get inspiration, education, and social interaction at the same place: http://writerschatroom.com/forum/index.php 
| | ARTICLE An Eye on Horror by Scott Virtes
Modern fiction has a host of rules and assumptions, and there are dozens of genre labels
that get thrown around. As a result, I find that a lot of the writers getting started today don't even know what it is they're writing. But if you don't know what you're writing, how are you going to know which markets to send it to, or how to market it?
Horror is a genre, but horror is also an emotion. As an editor at Fangoria once put it
when I sent him a creepy dream story: "A horror story needs to evoke the emotion of horror." Duh. That's a good example of how an editor's comments can say more about what they're looking for than their guidelines ever can.
The Elements:
The emotion of horror is that breathless sense that the very things that make us human have been violated. A story can be creepy or spooky without being horrifying. Creepy and spooky are elements of atmosphere that help build suspense. A story can have blood and guts and murder, and not be horrifying -- sadly, we know that people are capable of nasty things, so violence alone doesn't violate our reality. Most murder stories
fall under crime drama or mystery. Likewise, terror is the immediate fear for your life, which requires no horror at all; an oncoming truck will do just fine. And the tension and sense of peril that makes us keep turning pages is known as suspense. Again, a story can be suspenseful without being a horror story. Things can leap out of shadows for a quick jolt, but that's not it either -- technically, those are "thrills". Last, but not least, there's the gross-out. A lot of things happen in fiction that are gross, but they don't shake our sense of humanity.
As dramatic elements, horror, terror, suspense and thrills are tools (hammers and nails) which can be used as needed in any type of writing. So are science, logic, humor and so on. Few stories are just a bunch of
words with one single dramatic element. The overall genre label of the work depends on what the total effect of the piece is; or personal preference, even an occasional whim of a publisher trying to fill slots in a list. Take the movie "Alien": clearly the film is suspenseful, with moments of terror, and the obligatory cheap thrills, but the overwhelming result is the atmosphere of horror, of being trapped and fed upon ... and hardly any science at all, just a spaceship and a little science babble here and there. That's a horror flick. Then again, labels get thrown around like crazy, and anything with a spaceship must be sci-fi. One can stomach "sci-fi horror" for this one, but if you write something like that, know what it is, and skip the markets looking for fantasy.
Like every genre, horror goes through phases of including some works, excluding others, even splitting into subcategories. Some of that comes from critics, some from publishers, some from readers, as we all try to explain just what it is that we do or don't like. You should be familiar with what's happening in any genre you write for, or you can fall through the cracks easily.
Quick History:
Horror has been with us since before the written word existed. Try to imagine that ancient world, where people are wiped out by mysterious forces without explanation, and the nights are utterly dark. In one of the earliest written legends (ancient Sumerian), Innana descends into the underworld, but her body turns into a piece of meat that gets hung on a hook until
her soul returns -- my favorite ancient horror moment. Although we can find these highlights, literature was just an infant back then. Everything was scary but writing was largely restricted for use by rulers and bean counters only. If only we knew what stories folks told over their kitchen fires when there were armies camped outside and the wind was howling through the cemetery!
It wasn't until the Industrial Revolution that we had a good sense of what was real and what wasn't. Before that the world was full of legends and guesses. Since then it has been full of reason and invention (for better or worse), and it's by violating our rigid reality -- throwing unknowns back into our world -- that horror found its modern footing. On the timeline of literature, it was the Romantics
of the 18th century who rebelled against the machines, claiming that all power came from nature and our imagination, and penning some wild visions to make their case. After that was the darker Gothic period of the 19th century, where dreams were dashed, mortality crept into the work, and every brooding castle had its grim tales and spectral wanderings. Most of these works are verbose and clunky from a modern standpoint, way too sluggish to take seriously. But if you give them a chance, a lot of them do bring you into a world of darkness and dread, and there are some true horror moments.
We look back to Edgar Allen Poe (1809-49) for taking it a step further, creating works where the dread becomes true horror for page after page; and H.P. Lovecraft (1890-1937) for giving it new life
and inspiring many friends and followers down to our modern day. It's worth noting something about this transition. Lovecraft called this work "supernatural horror," because the horror comes from beyond what we're willing to accept into our natural world. Notice that there are several levels of supernatural things. Things like ghosts are somewhat accepted, not so much as a proven reality, only that ghost stories are a part of life. In a way, they're the "mundane" supernatural, along with witches, vampires and others, now that they've been made nearly mainstream by TV. We've heard so much about them, they're just not a big deal. But there are much worse things out there - things that will never be seen in prime time.
The other way to sort out the supernaturals
is by the level of threat they represent. In ghost stories or vampire stories, a few people get freaked out. Monster stories are ageless
classics, and maybe a few more people get stomped on. A nasty plague (take Stephen King's The Stand) goes deeper, throwing all of society into ruin, but there are survivors. In a way, the transition from Gothic ghosts to Lovecraft's monstrosities is one of scale. The Gothic writers told a spooky yarn, then the supernatural horror writers came along and showed us things that humanity could not possibly coexist with, lurking in caves and oceans, waiting for a chance to wipe us out for good. One messed with
personal beliefs, the other attacks reality itself.
After the pulp era (1920's-60's), a modern fiction emerged in all genres
where writers dared to go closer and get up close and personal with their characters and creations. Lovecraft admits that he and his peers were primarily interested in the atmosphere of horror. Modern masters have added the character-driven aspect, and placed real people in horrifying situations. Usually, Stephen King is used at the milestone here: I'd put The Shining (1977) as the turning point. But add Richard Matheson, Ramsey Campbell, Robert McCammon, Clive Barker, and Peter Straub for the 1970's-90's; lots of fascinating work there. This was called "psychological horror" for a few decades, partially because it seemed like the people were acting on real psychological impulses, and because there were whole novels devoted to characters with specific psychological problems.
After Stephen King hit the stratosphere, there was a long period of copycats and people trying to cash in on the craze, followed by a sense of glut in the 1990's, where some authors just wanted to show how sick and over-the-top they could be. Meanwhile many pro authors began to shun the horror label, and begged to get moved to regular fiction. A few catchy subgenres like splatterpunk ran for 5 or 10 years.
Interestingly, two of our milestone authors wrote important works on the history of the genre before them. Lovecraft gave us "Supernatural Horror in Literature" (1927), and Stephen King gave us "Danse Macabre" (1980). These are still required reading, and it's amazing to see the differences in the genre in the half century between these two books.
Conclusion:
Right now, it looks like "supernatural horror" has been taken over by vampires and ghost
hunters, and things based on TV shows based on older TV shows. I'm not sure exactly what the classic supernatural horror is being called now, though some of us now think of it as "outsider horror" for going outside of all regular human experience. When some markets say "horror" they mean "real horror", but others are just as happy with suspense or terror; check the guidelines, or pay attention to those short comments on the rejection letter.
I hope this very brief history helps you find where your own work fits in. You need to have a goal when you're writing -- horror, suspense, thriller, action and crime stories all
have their own rules and history and expectations. While you're writing you need to know how the supernatural is viewed in your story, what it's boundaries are, how characters will react to what they're seeing. If you setup a story like a horror story and there's just a quick Boo! at the end, then you missed something. If a market says they want works like early Clive Barker and you send them a mixed-up semi-gothic romance, you're just not going to score any karma points with that editor. If you wish to write in a particular genre, make sure you read a lot from that genre, but be aware that styles from past decades or centuries will not necessarily sell in the modern markets.
Know your genre, and read, read, read.
======Scott Virtes has had about 400 stories & poems published since 1986. He was just in Analog (July/Aug 2007), and has had works in Dreams & Nightmares, Ideomancer, Nocturnal Ooze, Cafe Irreal, the Late Late Show, and many more. He has two story collections and 5 poetry chapbooks available. You can watch him die in "Master and Commander", but he's okay now. Home page: http://tales.scvs.com | 
Get Paid to Write Book Reviews Sick of editors thinking a free book is ample paying for your book review? Here Hope Clark offers the serious book reviewer 70+ publications that pay for book reviews. Never look at book reviews the same again after you read this guide on submitting quality book reviews and book review pitches to editors. | October Chat Guests For more information, visit our schedule page. All chats start at 7 pm EST. | I find the Spotlight newsletter very interesting. Short and sweet and still very informative.
I also visit the website quiet often and like everything I find there. So, please keep up the good work. Tannia E. Ortiz-Lop?s | Blog Spotlight "Hail Saten (the online journal of novelist Brian Keene) is a collection of satire and opinion regarding writing, the horror genre, pop culture, current
events, and people in the public eye. Material not suitable for all audiences. Any resemblance to persons real or imagined is coincidental. Neither Blogger nor Brian Keene’s editors or publishers are responsible for any of the content or opinions expressed on this page. (and yes, Saten is spelled with an 'e')." http://www.hailsaten.blogspot.com/ I'm really not sure what else I can add to that. Other than the fact that I absolutely
LOVE Brian's blog. Brace yourself when you click over to read it. He could be a ranting about the government, picking names for his baby-in-process, working out a new horror plot, or sharing his experiences at a rock concert. Brian writes about whatever Brian feels like writing about. And it's all interesting. Once you've read his blog, take your spinning head over to his discussion board at http://dan0oo.com/keene/index.php . You don't have to be a horror fan to enjoy it. There are discussions on nearly any topic you can think of. Drop by and give
it a read!Audrey Shaffer is extremely busy lately. Drop by a Wednesday night chat to see what insanity she's gotten herself into. She hasn't had time to update her blog for a while. | Article October Frost
by Pete Tzinski It’s autumn. There’s no denying it, at least not in my corner of the world. I woke up the other day to a beautiful red sunrise with geese flying in a “V” for warmer parts and a bit of a frost touching the leaves and cars outside. Everything is sharp, not only with the bite of the chill in the air but the colors and the world itself. Everything is in crystal focus. It’s the best time of year to be alive. It’s Ray Bradbury country, this time of year, isn’t it? Most of his stories weren’t Halloween stories, or haunted stories, true enough…but when it comes around to this time of year, this is when I happily read my copy of The Halloween Tree, and Something Wicked This Way Comes. They’re unashamedly joyous celebrations of things that go bump in the night, of takin’ off your skin and dancing ‘round in your bones. For me, as a writer and a reader, this time of year gravitates inevitably toward Halloween. Just yesterday, I went for a walk to think about my science fiction robot serial, to think about my novel set in ancient Rome. Instead, I spent the whole
walk thinking about this obscure little haunted house story I want to tell, someday. I spent the whole time thinking about bone orchards and skeleton fruit. I love horror. Stephen King makes me happy, even when he’s making me cringe. Joe Hill’s Heart-Shaped Box was not necessarily horror but it spooked me nonetheless. Those, and other works like ‘em, are things I read all through the year. I guess I equate horror and Halloween as two different things. When Halloween comes around, it’s Bradbury novels for my reading.
It’s pieces of music like A Night on Bald Mountain for my listening. It’s movies like Nightmare Before Christmas and old Lon Chaney movies, where he stumbles around as a hunchback, or glides around as Count Dracula. The difference between horror and Halloween is, I think, sheer joy. The uplifted spirits and sense of coming alive that this time of year instills in me is the same feeling that jubilant celebrations of Halloween give me. Horror is visceral and, although sometimes funny, is rarely intended to be a laff riot. Halloween -- when we celebrate the dead and the graves, the bones and the things which wait in the darkest shadows of the deepest night
to snatch us away – is really a celebration of being alive. Of being able to run and shout and scream and terrify ourselves. Halloween, then, is as happy and delightful a holiday as Christmas is. Sometimes, I think we as a society get too caught up in the macabre. We forget the joy that should be twined along with it, and then it just gets dark and gruesome. Blood and screams in the night should have a joy with it. Does that sound twisted and worrisome to you? Maybe it is. But to drag out my Christmas defense again, I would liken it to a young boy tearing the wrapping paper off a toy laser gun and shouting with delight. Seen in the proper way, as delight and
not menace, both of these things should be wonderful. Certainly, I couldn’t write an article like this without autumn whistling around me. This is nothing more than me asking you to go for a walk, scrunch through some piles of leaves, enjoy the shiver that the wind gives you. Listen to some music or read a story that chills you the same way. Look at the shadows, wherever you find them. See what’s waiting to eat you. Say hello. Bradbury and I will be over here, picking skeleton fruit from the bone trees. ------------------------ Pete Tzinski lives in Minnesota, for reasons he cannot discern. He is married and has a newborn son, and he knows exactly how both of those things happened. He's outnumbered by the animals in the house, and that one's anyone's guess. He is a longtime writer of all sorts of things, and would like to happily plug his online science fiction serial God in the Machine. http://gotm.wordpress.com | 
If you'd like to suggest a guest, topics for a theme chat, offer yourself as a chat guest, or give feedback about a chat you've attended, contact Audrey Shaffer at: audrey@writerschatroom.com On the Products page you will find some great recommendations. Please use our links to buy, and help support the chatroom! | | We look forward to chatting with you! Audrey Shaffer Linda Hutchinson Renee Barnes |
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