Be Here Now by Eric Beetner

 As we head into a rather big news week - do you ever get stories “ripped from the headlines”? How much do you rely on current events to fuel your stories?

I don’t typically write anything that is “of the moment” or places it in a specific here and now. I’ve written period pieces set in the 1930s, the 50s and the 60s. For those books the time was a factor in the story for sure. And you have to get the details accurate to make the world believable in everything from pop culture to news of the day. But to start dropping in references to things happening now I feel dates a book pretty quickly.

One reason is the slow pace of publishing. By the time I write something, submit it, sell it, go through an editing process, etc. it will have been 18 months on the short end. Much longer can be typical. So already those topical references would be dated.

Songs, movies, slang terms, fashion trends all work like cement shoes to weigh a story down in one particular time and space. If I populate a book with people doing the ice bucket challenge or dancing to Gangam Style, I’ve unwittingly written a period piece. But when a period is only a few years ago, it just seems dated.

For me, one thing that couldn’t be denied was Covid. In my latest book, The Last Few Miles Of Road, I made mention of it once. When the main character, Carter, is thinking about friends of his who have died, I listed Covid among the reasons people he knew had passed on. That was it, though. It didn’t play a part in the story. I merely acknowledged that it was a part of the world and moved on.

If you write political thrillers, to contend with the ever-changing political landscape must be difficult to navigate. But to ignore social changes also risks stagnating a book into tired tropes. Are the bad guys really the same as they were 20 or 30 years ago? Authors need to move with the times.

Stories that come from news reports or some kind of current event are often best used if they could have happened at any point in history. It’s one reason why crime novels in general work so well over time. The motivations for criminal acts never change. Lust, greed, jealousy all remain untouched in the human psyche no matter what the decade, or century for that matter.

So if you manage to capture the zeitgeist and time it perfectly, you might get a hit book out of it. But the chances of writing something topical that will last is slim. You’d have to wait for it to get old enough to become a period piece. 

But I suppose if a book was set in my own youth it would be considered period now. So maybe that’s not so far off after all. Or maybe I just want to think that.

Write with Special Sauce

 

Do you ever get stories “ripped from the headlines”? How much do you rely on current events to fuel your stories?

 

We’ve all heard the familiar chestnuts: ‘Reality is stranger than Fiction’ and ‘Every story has already been told,’ or a permutation on the latter, ‘Every book has been rewritten.’

 

I think the reason why readers see the same stories over and over again, and why agents and publishers are reluctant to take on inventive stories or creative uses of language is twofold: one, formula provides comfort and familiarity; and two, reason one is reliable, predictable, and profitable. The truly inventive works of literature challenge readers and critics.

 

Writers are left with two choices, either recast the ancient tropes or create a twist that I’ll call the Special Sauce.

 

The original movie Star Wars is a collection of tropes of classical (and world) literature. The royal baby is raised in the wild, unaware of his origin. Siblings are separated at birth. There is a Master (Yoda) and a Helper (Han Solo). There is a divine power (the Force), etc. etc. It’s Joseph Campbell’s Power of Myth, the Hero’s Journey 101.

 

The Secret Sauce is it all occurs in a galaxy far, far away.

 

There are books and movies that have gone rogue, become unexpected blockbusters and bestsellers, the ones every agent or publisher said didn’t stand an ice cube’s chance in hell. These are the underdogs or underground classics we have all come to love. The film Rocky is an example. Frank Herbert’s Dune was universally (pun intended) rejected before it became the best-selling science fiction novel of all time.

As for the question of Repetition vs Originality, I can’t help but think of the machine in Orwell’s 1984. It recombines prefabricated stanzas to create “new” stories to entertain the prolets in order to keep them distracted.

My Shane Cleary series, set in Seventies Boston, uses real locations to create ‘atmosphere’ and suggest the mores of the decade. DIRTY OLD TOWN kicked off the series. I drew inspiration from real events in SYMPHONY ROAD, such as the arson-for-profit ring that included corrupt city officials, law enforcement, and insurance adjusters. The Special Sauce is that a mafioso seeks justice. In HUSH HUSH, I revisited the murder of Andrew Puopolo in the Combat Zone in 1976, a case that changed jury selection in America and almost brought Boston to the edge of chaos because of judicial racism—as if the court-ordered desegregation of schools and public housing hadn’t brought Bostonians to blows. The Special Sauce I added to the story was that a father of the accused sought justice, and I provided an alternate fictional motivation for the crime. LIAR’S DICE, which received the Shamus Award for Best PI this year, brings forward elements of a war over narcotics within the Sicilian and Calabrian mafias, in the US and Canada during the 70s. I also hinted about clandestine activities and atrocities in Vietnam (Shane is a Vietnam veteran). The Special Sauce is the FBI’s questionable tactics in trying to dismantle organized crime. In ‘real life,’ the agency would later cite ‘rogue elements.’ In The BIG LIE, I dove deeper into those ‘rogue elements,’ mixing fact and fiction.

Level Best Books is reissuing my Company Files, and I’ll be adding a fourth title by the summer of 2025. The inaugural book, THE GOOD MAN, is set in Vienna, as Operation Paperclip is underway. The nascent CIA is recruiting former Nazis to counter Soviet progress in the arms race. This was real history that most people (cough, agents) didn’t want to hear when I shopped the pitch. One agent called it ‘morally offensive’ and challenged the veracity of the premise. I sent her the declassified file on Paperclip. In THE NAMING GAME, I revisit the Hollywood studio system and its use of blacklisted writers during the Red Scare. There’s no real Special Sauce here. I had fun with the era, and the material wrote itself. In THE DEVIL’s MUSIC, I extended the consequences of McCarthy’s Red Scare. I remind readers of the special relationship between Senator McCarthy and the Kennedy family (he was godfather to Robert Kennedy’s children). If there’s any Special Sauce here, it’s revisiting the relationship of convenience between organized crime and the CIA. In the fourth novel, out this summer, I explore Operation Ajax. You can Google if you haven’t heard of it. It’s History in plain sight.

I have written another series that I am debating whether to bring to the fore, but I don’t know if there is any interest in it. In the Roma series, I present corporations and governments as no different from organized crime (Special Sauce). I explore history that seems unknown to most Americans: the US’s decades-long destabilization of the Italian government, in what became known as the Strategy of Tension and Years of Lead.

All said and done, writers combine and recombine stories. If there is a thing we call Originality, it is our use of language, and what chapter in the familiar forest we’ve chosen to mine for material.

There is no accounting for LUCK, in being in the right place at the right time, and knowing the right people.

Until then, I follow Yoda’s advice: “Do or do not. There is no try.”

My Truth

Q: As we head into a rather big news week - do you ever write stories “ripped from the headlines”? How much do you rely on current events to fuel your work?

From Susan

 

Taking a whole story or a major plot from something that made the news doesn’t work for me. For one thing, the real story already exists. And if it’s crime fiction, there are real people who might feel I was ripping the scars off their devastating wounds for my own benefit. I know there are TV shows that do it all the time. I would never watch them. But how many good writers actually do that? For one thing, that would insult our own creativity. 

 

What does fuel my writing is the small tidbits from the real world – a nasty overheard comment, the sight of a police car with lights flashing and sirens screaming on the highway, the image of a vulnerable old woman putting one foot in front of her at a time navigating a slippery sidewalk. The smell of oil leaking from a car can trigger a mental image. The smell of lilacs. The taste of garlic. Anything at the perfect moment that connects with something inside me, a memory, a hope, a frisson of happiness, a disappointment, fear….So, my external world and my inner world. After all, when memories surface because of some external poke, they are current again, aren’t they? 

 

My WIP is in a setting I haven’t written about, has characters not much like the ones I’ve written about in my seven books, but I realize that the plot and the characters and even the setting aren’t that far removed from the bits and bobs and have accumulated in my head and in my senses for years. The plot has a bit to do with art fraud, in the news often, and a  bit to do with billionaires who are in the news and in our faces every day, alas. There are women like the “Housewives of…” and imposters. 

 

Right now it’s a stew and I’m not sure where it’s headed. Funny, just last month there was a profile of a very rich man who is no longer as rich as he once was, and at least one of the tidbits I am stirring into my mix echoes his situation. The dialogue I create might be a riff on his complaint to the interviewer. Might, but might be juicier.

 

Is truth stranger than fiction? Maybe, but fiction gives writers the chance to bend truth without becoming liars. We smooth it out, rough it up, and get to write our own damn endings.

 

 

 

  

When Diwali and Halloween coincide - by Harini Nagendra

 It's Halloween week. Do you read horror? Have you written any? Why or why are you not a fan?

It's Diwali week in India - festival of lights, which we call Deepawali in the south of India, where I am. We stopped bursting crackers several decades back, when my nephew was in primary school, and got us to sign an anti-pollution petition after reading about child labour in some of the manufacturing factories. But we do light lamps with oil and cotton wicks and set them out in the garden, and enjoy how pretty they look. 

Halloween was not a thing in India in the 1970s, or even the 2000s - but somewhere around 2010 and thereafter it started growing in popularity. It's common in many larger cities to keep out candy for the festival now, though still very patchy. But Halloween plus Diwali is definitely a strange combination. In my mom's apartment complex, the resident Whatsapp group had a hilarious discussion going on about dressing the kids up in Indian finery for the Diwali pooja, or prayers, and offering them traditional Indian sweets - and then taking a half hour break, doing a quick costume change, and then welcoming little vampires, werewolves and witches with packaged candy. Two worlds coinciding, or rather colliding, in the most bizarre of ways!  

But the topic of today's post is horror, not Halloween. Do I read horror? No. I get scared too easily, and I know anything I read along those lines would haunt me for life. I am prone to recurring nightmares as it is, and don't want to add any more to my list, thanks very much. 

Have I written any? No, and why - see above.

The closest I came to appreciating horror was in high school, when a number of my good friends got hooked onto werewolf stories, and the Friday the 13th series of movies, as well as Nightmare on Elm Street, and the Shining (remember those?). I'll date myself even further by saying that my best friend at the time went into an absolute panic because she was alone at home watching a horror movie, and the tape on her VCR machine snagged, replaying one of the worst scenes over and over while she cowered behind the sofa, screaming for help - until her older sister walked in, and teased her mercilessly, no doubt finding the whole scene hilarious. Until then, I had planned on going to her home to watch a horror film with her. But when I heard this I decided against it.

I've never been tempted to read horror after that, but I did watch an iconic horror film about 20 years back, when I lived opposite a cemetery in Bloomington IN. I was part of the Bloomington Storyteller's Guild, and we told spooky stories in a gorgeously atmospheric outdoor park - very mildly spooky, as there were young children running around, and hot chocolate doing the round accompanied by cookies. My friend Nathan insisted that the best way to wrap up the evening was to watch the Blairwitch Project, followed by a midnight walk in the cemetery. Which, according to him, was a rite of passage in the midwest that I had missed while growing up in India, and needed to be immediately remedied.

So we did. And.... nothing happened. I liked the film, which thankfully suggested more than it actually showed, but we didn't have a sticky tape, the walk was fine, and - all good. (Or I would have killed Nathan. I warned him not to make it too scary).

So that's my opinion on horror, folks. I prefer not to deal with it because I can't deal with the scary stuff! 

It’s Opera—Everybody Dies from Erica Miner

As we head into a rather big news week, do you ever get stories “ripped from the headlines”? How much do you rely on current events to fuel your stories?

Jim: I take full responsibility for the premature appearance of week’s question, which was supposed to be next week’s question. I miscalculated the date. So, apologies to all. But I feel this topic fits our guest poster’s book better anyway. 

Erica Miner writes a thrilling series of mysteries set in the world of opera. I’ve had the privilege and pleasure of reading all her books (as advance reader copies), including her latest, OVERTURE TO MURDER, which released just last week. I’m a BIG FAN of Erica’s and love her engaging amateur violinist sleuth, Julia Kogan. Though serious in tone, these books are so much fun. And you’ll learn a lot about opera reading them. As you’ll see below, Erica is a violinist who played for many, many years with the Metropolitan Opera. Yes, THAT Metropolitan Opera. A marvelous writer of juicy murder mysteries, Erica is a brilliant lecturer and screen writer as well.

Please welcome Erica Miner to 7 Criminal Minds and don’t miss OVERTURE TO MURDER!

“It’s Opera—Everybody Dies”

 

CSI: OPERA?

 

Asked if any of my Opera Mystery novels have been “ripped from the headlines,” my response was, “It’s opera. It makes its own headlines.”

 

Headline-worthy events are not a nightly occurrence at the opera. But they have happened. 

 

As I think back to my 21 years as a violinist with the Metropolitan Opera, there were two discoveries that stood out as the most significant: 1) an opera house is the perfect environment for mischief and mayhem; and 2) what goes on offstage can be more dramatic than what happens onstage. Two of the most significant examples of these occurred while I was there.

 

Image 1

Once during a live performance being broadcast to thousands, if not millions, of people across the US (Verdi’s Macbeth—I know, the dreaded word; and believe me, it was one of the most disastrous productions of the 20th century), a guy in the audience decided to commit suicide by taking a flying leap off the balcony (see picture 1). I’m not making this up! Fortunately for everyone else, he waited until the intermission to do the deed. It had to have been the longest in Met history, since—ugh—there was all that cleanup to do. 

 

The above is an example of something dramatic happening away from the stage. But on a different occasion, the catastrophe occurred onstage during a performance that was not supposed to be part of the performance.

 

The opera was new to the Met: The Makropoulos Case by the Czech composer Leoš Janáček. It was written in Czech, but we were doing it in English (a salient detail in this story). The stage director, in his infinite lack of wisdom, had the poor comprimario tenor (comprimario singers are solo singers who do minor roles, the equivalent of supporting actors in film) singing from the top of a twenty-foot ladder. Seriously? Picture this: the Met stage is itself eight or ten feet high, then add twenty feet to that, with a singer who had a fear of heights. It was a disaster waiting to happen. Sure enough, at the first performance of The Makropoulos Case, the poor tenor was singing from the top of a twenty-foot ladder in front of four thousand people. He sang a couple of lines, and then collapsed and plunged to his death right there on the stage (see image 2). Turns out he had had a heart attack—no surprise. But here’s the kicker: the last words he sang before the fall were, “You can only live so long.”

Image 2

 

You can’t make this stuff up. Writing about such incredible events is hard to resist. But would I rip the above stories from the headlines to use in my novels? Highly unlikely. It would be recognized by too many people as real life, coming from such a high profile institution as the Met. There’s a fine line between actual occurrences and fiction. I think many well-informed people would have issues with my reproducing some of the Met’s least savory moments in my novels.

That said, I have taken inspiration from these happenings to develop and deepen my characterizations. The vast majority of my characters represent an amalgamation of the traits and experiences of the people I worked with. I remember one particularly vivid headline-generating incident that involved one of my closest colleagues. I based one of my main characters on this person, couched the event in fictional prose to make it less recognizable, and wove it into the plot of the first book in my series, Aria for Murder. Those in the know understood the connection. Some were critical, others kinder in their assessments. In subsequent novels, however, I’ve steered away from being too close to real life.

Nonetheless, when it came to my protagonist I did not hesitate to base her on the person I know best: myself. At the beginning of Aria for Murder my protagonist, Julia, is a young violinist much like me when I first started out at the Met: a naïve, inexperienced, starstruck neophyte who knows nothing about the political machinations and infighting that go on backstage. She’s just excited to be making her debut in the orchestra of the world’s most prestigious opera company. Little does she know something terrible is about to happen. It's not long before Julia finds herself entangled in a murder investigation and becomes cognizant of the dark side of the theatre, with its shadowy hallways and hidden stairways. 

 

The dreadful occurrence that sets the story in motion is based on a real situation that to my knowledge was not covered in the media, involving a company member: a case of what happens at the Met stays at the Met. Only insiders are familiar with the true circumstances. But I chose to fabricate a fictional happening from a newsworthy one. In that sense, I fueled the story with a recent though not current event.  

Other plot points in Aria for Murder and the sequels Prelude to Murder and Overture to Murder are based on headlines and stories that have been reported in the media. Opera companies are rife with volatile people and potential danger. This goes back to my theory that opera houses provide the perfect setting for calamity and catastrophe: sometimes tragic, sometimes unbelievable, but always headline worthy.

 

A friend of mine was at a rehearsal where the soprano was singing her death scene, while her twelve-year-old son was waiting patiently at the back. The friend asked the boy what he thought about his mother’s death scene. The kid replied, “It’s opera. Everybody dies.”

 

Wise words from the mouth of babes. What happens onstage can be reflected in true occurrences and vice versa: the kind of sensationalism that media like to proclaim in their headlines. That’s one of the aspects of opera that results in its wide appeal: a unique art form that chronicles true occurrences, both contemporary and timeworn. 

 

Verdi, one of the greatest opera composers, based works like Don Carlo on true events, heightening Spanish history with exalted music. Anthony Davis’s The Life and Times of Malcolm X musicallyrecounts the infamous assassination of a controversial public figure. The tradition continues, ripped from headlines both recent and historical, with true life situations that often end in tragedy, where someone, if not everyone, dies.

 

It’s opera. 

 

 

Bio:

 

Erica Miner

Award-winning Seattle-based author, lecturer, screenwriter and arts journalist Erica Miner believes opera theatres are perfect places for creating fictional mischief! Drawing on her 21 years as a violinist at the famed Metropolitan Opera, Erica balances her reviews and interviews of real-world musical artists with fanciful plot fabrications that reveal the dark side of the fascinating world of opera, guiding readers through a dramatized version of the opera world in her Julia Kogan Opera Mystery series.

Erica’s young violinist sleuth, Julia Kogan, investigates high-profile murder and mayhem behind the Met’s “Golden Curtain” in Book 1, Aria for Murder (2022), finalist in the 2023 Eric Hoffer Book Awards and Chanticleer Independent Book Awards. 

In Book 2, Prelude to Murder (2023) (‘A skillfully written whodunit of operatic proportions’—Kirkus Reviews https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/erica-miner/prelude-to-murder/, 

Distinguished Favorite, 2024 NYC Big Book Awards, further operatic chaos and ghostly apparitions plague Julia at the Santa Fe Opera. In Overture to Murder, releasing in Oct. 2024, Julia finds herself in jeopardy once again at the San Francisco Opera. 

 

Erica’s debut novel, Travels with My Lovers, won the Fiction Prize in the Direct from the Author Book Awards. Her screenplays have won awards in the Writer’s Digest, Santa Fe, and WinFemmecompetitions. When she isn't plumbing the depths of opera houses for murderous mayhem, Erica frequently contributes reviews and interviews for the well-known arts websites www.BroadwayWorld.com, www.bachtrack.com, and www.LAOpus.com.

 

AUTHOR WEBSITE:

https://www.ericaminer.com

 

SOCIAL MEDIA HANDLES:

https://www.facebook.com/erica.miner1              

https://twitter.com/EmwrtrErica          

https://www.instagram.com/emwriter3/

 

ISBNs: 978-1-68512-781-7 (pb)        978-1-68512-782-4 (eb)

 

The Goosebump Genre

It's Halloween week. Do you read horror? Have you written any? Why or why are you not a fan?

by Dietrich

While I’ve written some dark stuff, I haven’t attempted to write a horror novel. I don’t possess the macabre fascination that would be needed, and there’s no draw to explore that line between what’s real and what’s hiding under the stairs. 

"The tale of monstrosity and terror is a basket loosely packed with phobias; when the writer passes you by, you take one of his imaginary horrors out of the basket and put one of your real ones in – at least for a time.” — Stephen King, from the preface of Night Shift.

I grew up reading horror classics like Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, the short stories of Edgar Allan Poe, William Peter Blatty’s The Exorcist, Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House, Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury, Richard Matheson’s Hell House, Rosemary’s Baby by Ira Levin, and Roald Dahl’s Book of Ghost Stories. And while I did enjoy them, I came to realize I didn’t much care to have the bejesus scared out of myself. These days, I still feel that way, so I can’t say I’m a big fan of the genre, with one exception — Stephen King. He’s certainly got a talent for creating relatable characters facing the worst kind of hell and horror. I don’t think anyone could even think of the genre without putting him at the top. Just consider his classics like The Shining, Misery, The Dead Zone, Carrie, Cujo, Christine, Firestarter, and It.

And there are those images from his film adaptations that are hard to get out of my head too, scenes like: “Heeeeeeeere's Johnny!” And how about those twins?

While I can appreciate his horror novels, I’m a bigger fan of his not-so-scary books, the ones that cross into other genres, something he does exceptionally well. There are the psychological thrillers Misery and Dolores Claiborne, the crime novels Billy Summers and The Colorado Kid, the hardboiled detective stories of the Bill Hodges trilogy, the dystopian novels Running Man and The Long Walk, the alternate history 11/22/63, the literary fiction Hearts in Atlantis, the novella Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption. And there’s the Depression-era prison novel, The Green Mile, an equal mix of fantasy, thriller and crime. And there’s Joyland which combines mystery, horror and coming-of-age genres. And the Dark Tower series that combines fantasy, horror and western.

Another genre hop for King and a recent favorite of mine was Fairy Tale. He wrote it during the pandemic lockdown. It’s a dark fantasy about an ordinary young guy forced into a hero’s role in an otherworldy realm, fighting the forces of evil.

Another book I enjoyed was Road Rage, a thriller tribute to Richard Matheson and a collaboration between Stephen King and his son Joe Hill. There’s the classic tale, Duel, about a salesman driving cross-country on an empty two-lane highway and being menaced by an unseen driver in an old oil tanker. It’s full throttle terror riding on 18 wheels. Then there’s the short story Throttle by King and Hill, which is a different kind of duel in the Nevada desert, pitting a faceless trucker against an outlaw motorcycle gang.

And since we’re talking about the horror genre this week, I’d be remiss if I didn’t at least mention Dean Koontz and his novel Watchers; Anne Rice and Interview with the Vampire; Clive Barker and Weaveworld; and Peter Straub and Ghost Story — all of whom may have you sleeping with the light on, but all worth checking out as well.

Over the Top

 

Terry here: It’s Halloween week. The question: Do you read horror? Have you written any? Why or why are you not a fan? Here’s a Halloween scene.

Bet you can’t guess where it is. It’s Athens! We were there for three weeks, and the last day, October 11, we went to a lively part of Athens where there were a lot of outdoor cafes and a general air of merriment. Here, we ran into a street decorated for Halloween that surpassed anything I’ve seen in other cities. 

 When we were in Florence, years ago, around Halloween, we saw the same thing—a plethora of Halloween decorations—ghosts, cats, bats, spooky faces, cobwebs, witches, etc. 

Until then I had thought Halloween was strictly an American event (I can’t call it a holiday because holiday is a shortening of the words “holy day,” and unless you’re a Satan worshiper, it’s isn’t really holy. (Not that many of our holidays are religious, but they are holy in the sense that they convey a sense of importance. “President’s Day” for example is a way to honor the memory of men--of course it’s always been men--who led the U.S., and whose memory we hold dear.) 

 But I digress. When my son was small, I loved Halloween, and thought it was a great event for little kids. But gradually over the years I’ve seen it morph into a chance for adults to dress up in costume, maybe allowing themselves to try out an alter-ego. But those events don’t have the same sense of surprise and delight that I see in children at Halloween. 

 Sense of surprise? Yep. I remember the first time I finally was able to convince our son that he should go up to our neighbor’s door and yell “trick or treat” and that nothing bad would happen. When they threw candy into his bag, he turned around with utter delight on his face and yelled, “It worked!” 

The funny thing is that he didn’t like going to the street one over from ours, where most every home was decorated to the hilt. It overwhelmed him. It was intense. Children cried and hung back, the sense of fun taken over by overwrought decorations--competition among neighbors to outdo each other. It was an adult event that had lost its sense of cheerful fun. 

As for the element of “horror,” I don’t really enjoy reading horror. If Halloween is about tricksters and alter-egos, the few horror books and stories I’ve read seem to have something else entirely at work—a sense of unseen malevolence that lies just outside our real world. It’s about manifesting the evil that lives in some humans and making it palpable. (Think The House of Leaves--a truly spooky book) 

Horro is about taking the worst of people’s behavior and rendering it larger-than life. It always seems to have a sense of vengeance associated with it. “Treat me badly, and I will lay waste to you and your loved ones. I will terrify you, torment you, tear you limb from limb.” Sometimes the “being” wielding such hatred often looks like an ordinary person until something triggers their fury. (Think Carrie). But there are also “beings” that lie just outside our ability to see them who direct unseen horrors onto unsuspecting people. 

It doesn’t take a genius to see that this is an attempt to explain the unexplainable—to explain misery that is visited on people that they don’t seem to deserve. Or who deserve some kind of retribution, but the retribution is beyond cruel. 

 You could argue that children’s Halloween hints at this with its ghosts and witches and costumes that manifest “other,” but horror lies at the far end of that spectrum. 

 Not only do I not read much horror, but I also don't write it. As a crime writer, I get enough sense of malevolence from acts of real people in everyday life. That said, I’ve recently read a book that turned out to be in the horror category, and it haunts me because of the intense fury manifested in it. It was very well-written, so I had no quarrel with the writing; just the intensity of its villain. There was that sense that something lies just outside our real world, and it’s something that wants revenge, that it takes ordinary anger and twists it into the unrecognizable and makes it into something no human could actually do. As far as I'm concerned, horror has nothing to do with Halloween. 

 So…Happy Halloween everyone!

Things that Scream in the Dark

It’s Halloween week. Do you read horror? Have you written any? Why or why are you not a fan?

Spooky Spice ...er... Brenda here.

I have always loved Halloween and all that goes with it. Jack 'o lanterns, trick or treating, ghosts and goblins. But don't ask me to watch a horror movie or read a horror book. These are not some of my favourite things.

I write about murder and yet, I do not read true crime or watch shows like Criminal Minds. It's not the actual murder that interests me, more the puzzle and the people involved in a crisis. The psychology. What drives a person to kill somebody else, and how do they live with what they've done? What is the impact on those left behind? How do the detectives figure out whodunit? 

Amp these plot lines up a few notches to the horror level. Chain saws. Clowns. Screaming. Deranged people. Running and more running. Hiding. Blood. Lots of blood. The times I've sat through a horror movie have led to a sleepless night with bizarre dreams, some might say nightmares. I can picture the scenes in my head long after they've ended. Reading produces the same reaction. There's enough horrible stuff going on in the world that I don't need to let more into my brain.

I've had this kind of imagination since I can remember. When I was seven or so, I used to hide behind the floor-length curtains in the living room if I came home from school and my mother was out and siblings hadn't made it home yet. (Back in the days when helicopter parents weren't a thing.) And don't ask me to go tromping around in the woods after dark -- not going to happen. One of my childhood friends told me that wolves circled our houses at night, howling and trying to get inside, enough to give me a reoccurring nightmare (that I appear to have outgrown). Still, you won't find me hiking through the forest after the sun sets.

Okay, deep breath.

My fellow bloggers will likely recommend books in the horror category, and I tip my hat to them. I won't be since I don't read much if at all in the genre. The Halloween shenanigans give me an annual dose of spooky, and that's more than enough scary for me.

Website: www.brendachapman.ca

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Booooo, by Josh Stallings

 

Q: It’s Halloween week. Do you read horror? Have you written any? Why or why are you not a fan?

A: Firstly, I have avoided horror since I was ten-years-old and watched Hitchcock’s The Birds. In the last couple of years, I started reading some Horror. 

Coyote Songs, by Gabino Iglesias, was my gateway into horror. It seamlessly blends crime fiction and horror. But when it gets scary, it becomes terrifying.

Next came Cynthia Pelayo’s Children of Chicago. It starts as a police procedural, a Chicago detective is trying to find missing kids. Brown kids, that she knows no one will care about if she doesn’t. It gradually changes into supernatural horror. 

For my current project, I have spent the last few years educating myself on Latin American literature that led me to Mario Vargas Llosa’s Death in the Andes, another police procedural that becomes a supernatural horror tale. Creepy demon filled scary shit. By the time I was aware it was horror, I was too invested in the characters to look away.

And then there is Pedro Paramo, by Juan Rulfo. A true nightmare novel. A journey to a literal hell that had me hooked from the jump.

Horror and crime have so many overlaps that the lines blur. We have to keep creating sub-genres or kill the idea of genre all together. Not the worst idea I ever had.

Me, I’ll keep reading everything regardless of label. 

Sorry, this week is brutally short. I’m in Costa Rica doing research for my latest WIP.