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.
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