Author: Bob

In a recent Twitter post, author Phil Athans asked “What’s the hardest part of writing horror fiction?” My response was I find most horror to be humorous and don’t know why they find it scary. In response, he suggested some books. I’ve read some of those, and I here’s why I think I don’t understand.

First, a quick note. Since I’m going to be describing what I got from some books, I may be giving away important plot elements. Read on at your own peril.

The Haunting of Hill House

At the top of the list was The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson. I’ve read this and thoroughly enjoyed it. Apparently, many see this as a story about a horrible house built by a horrible person, Hugh Crain, and the way the ghosts of the house persecute the living. My assumption is that such readers are not paying attention or live in a very small world.

If you read the story carefully, it is a tale about Eleanor, a woman who has lived for a very long time in an abusive environment. With the death of her abuser, Eleanor is cast out into the world with no support structure. In this odd house, she has a full mental break down. It is very sad, but is also a reasonably realistic representation of what a person in that situation would go through. You do not need ghosts anywhere in this tale.

With research, it becomes better established that the supernatural often derives from the structure of the brain. Because of this, insanity can resemble hauntings. As Joseph Campbell put it in the fourth volume of his Masks of God books, “The shaman swims where the madman drowns.” Some would argue that the brain is just reacting to the supernatural that already exists or that the brain interprets what is seen in a human way but does not create that object. Either way, poor Eleanor needed a good shrink more than an exorcist.

H. P. Lovecraft

Also on the list are the writings of H. P. Lovecraft. Most people know Lovecraft as the originator of the Cthulhu mythos. His writings tell of horrific, indescribable beasts from other dimensions and planets. He can easily spend several pages describing how indescribable these monsters are. When I first read his stories, in my teens, I found them dry. I read them later in life and decided they were okay.

I can see where being faced with the unusual can be unsettling. People are wired that way. Likewise, an encounter with something powerful that wants to harm you can also instill fear. That’s why most of us avoid lions. Even with my more mature reading, I found it hard to relate to the characters, who often brought about their own demise by being nosy.

Much as the Godzilla movies, and related giant creature flicks, were a response to the nuclear age, Lovecraft’s writings respond to early thoughts on multidimensional space. The math and physics were coming into place to tell us that the universe had sides we could not see. A beast lurking in another dimension could be just as much a threat as a beast behind the tree. This is not much different from old fairy tales of someone passing into the fairy realms and suffering their adventures there. Honestly, when walking in the woods, I will avoid walking through anything that looks like a door, but that is for my own amusement and not out of actual fear of ending elsewhere. If I did end up in another dimension, I could simply await rescue by the student loan people wanting their money.

Alien

The list includes the novelization of the movie Alien. This is getting closer to what I can see as scary. I’ve not read the book, but the film is one of my favorites. In this case, you have many great horror components. The setting is cramped, dark, and isolated. Even without the monster, if anything goes wrong you could die in the vast emptiness of space. Then they add the unknown that evolves into a predatory beast intent on killing everyone from the shadows. Those are good scary things. I don’t tend to be frightened by movies, but I can see the intensity of this flick and why people would see it as scary. It is not as supernatural as some others; it relies on primal fears.

And the Rest

I have yet to read the other books on the list, but I intend to. It should be educational. However, just analyzing the items I have read, I think I might be seeing part of my problem with understanding horror.

I tend to be a bit grounded. I blame all that math and science I studied to get my college degrees. It’s much more likely that it comes from a life of hard work (before college) and all the other banal things. That’s not to say that I haven’t seen some weird stuff, because I have, but it left me without fear of those supernatural things. The danger in the stories rarely seem believable to me, so I don’t get it. I can see the patterns and know generally why other people find them scary, but not me.

What Scares Me

What are the things that scare me? My usual response is, “idiots in large numbers”. It sounds flippant, but it is true. I don’t have the stamina to fight more than a dozen idiots in hand to hand combat before they overwhelm me. That’s assuming that they don’t take me down before then.

The other fears are mundane as well. When I walk in the woods, often at night, I worry about a few things, in order of likelihood: deer that feel cornered, belligerent drunks, feral dogs. My sturdy walking stick will take care of a frightened deer or a drunk; not so much feral dogs. There is nothing supernatural about any of these things.

What this suggests to me is that I may want to limit my horror writing to the more natural terrors. The bad thing in Stephen King’s Cujo is just a very naughty dog. There are plenty of mundane things that could frighten the casual reader. Most don’t like the idea of being swallowed up by the ground (partially happened to me as a kid). Parasites burrowing into the skin and slowly working their way to your tasty entrails should cause discomfort in a reader. It could be disconcerting if some psychopath is convinced that you are his father and now intends to eat you.

I think horror could be a lot of fun to create, but I will have to work on it. On the other hand, how does it make you feel to know there is someone out there who thinks horror is funny?

My novel, Cordell’s Rebellion, has been available for twenty days as an eBook, a little less than that for the paperback. In that time, I’ve sold exactly one copy and given out thirteen. Those aren’t stellar numbers, but I didn’t expect much. I will see what feedback I get from the “promotional” copies I’ve given and, if there isn’t anything embarrassing in them, I will start promoting.

I’m not sure of my promotion plan at this time. There are several things I would like to do that may help, but much will depend on luck. Some of them will depend on money. All of them require time.

The money one is easy; buy some advertising. I could probably afford an ad in the Sunday edition of the state’s largest news paper. I haven’t even looked at the advertising costs for something like the New York Times. I have the money in savings to buy a state-level ad or two and the number of resultant sales to break even is reasonable. However, I’ve just had a cardiac stress test and a colonoscopy and I need to see how much that is going to cost me. If necessary, I may have to wait until my day job kicks in and I use lab differentials to save up my advertising funds.

Another thing I considered was finding notable personages and sending them copies. I know that if a politician or celebrity would discuss my book, for good or bad, word would get around. I’m having trouble thinking of which politicians would be appropriate. Most are busy and probably don’t read random books sent to them. Since I’m an Iowa author, I could try the folks from my state. The book takes place mostly in Missouri, so I could probably send them some too. I’ll give it more thought.

Those are my two main plans, if you can call them that. I still need to look into Google’s AdWords program and maybe a few other affiliate programs. To make matters worse, my day job starts up in a few weeks and it tends to take a lot of my time.

I’ve accepted that I may never be a famous author, but that I still have to keep going through the motions. I will stop writing when I’m dead, maybe. I like the idea of being a storyteller long after that.

This summer has been a killer. Most of my plans died abruptly. I was still able to get some things done. Most important of all, my novel, Cordell’s Rebellion, is now published. It is available in paperback or ebook. You can ask for it at your local Barnes and Noble, or get it online.

The summer started with a case of heat exhaustion. With my heart health, that left be discombobulated for about a week. It was quickly followed with two weeks of upper respiratory infection. The three weeks after that were filled with sinusitis that just would not go away. Each of these things included exhaustion. I spent the month of June in bed.

When July came around, I slowly regained my stamina. The excessive heat didn’t help. People with weak hearts don’t do well with hot weather. Still, I could start on my list of tasks.

I completed some of the things I needed to do for my day job. I wrote some on my next novel (it’s about four-fifths done). I created the cover art for Cordell’s Rebellion and I published the book.

My decision to self-publish was based on the weird feedback I kept getting from agents. The literary fiction people said it sounded too much like action/adventure. The action people said it sounded like literary fiction. Maybe I’ve created something that is either too hard for me to describe or is not really saleable. Either way, I went as far as a I could. Doing the self-publish thing meant that the project was sufficiently complete that I could move on to other things. If I can promote and sell it, great. If I can’t, I’ve at least got copies in existence and can say I finished writing at least one novel, even if it wasn’t popular.

Now the summer winds down. I will have to go back to teaching soon. This time I will no longer have the title of Instructor, but will be an Assistant Professor. Unfortunately, that means I need to make up lost time to preparations for the coming semester. That will limit the time I can spend promoting my book. It will also get in the way of writing. The need to pay bills and have good insurance is a pain.

So, don’t be a “Playtime Peterson”; go buy a copy of Cordell’s Rebellion.

I realized just what a long semester it had been this spring. Classes took all of my time and disrupted my writing quite a bit. Then I noticed that I said the same thing at the end of the previous semester. I’m starting to wonder if teaching full time will be compatible with a writing career. That’s part of the list of things to do this summer. Can I get it done?

Over the semester, I made a couple more passes over my novel. It got to the point where I couldn’t find anything else to change. I think it is as concise as it will get for the foreseeable future. I just need to do a blast to as many potential agents as I can or decide to go another route. The two alternate routes are self publishing and letting the whole thing drop.

I think I’ve gone too far to just drop it. It is more likely that I would spend a little time coming up with possible covers. Then I would use social media to see which cover was more popular and use that to self publish. If it sold anything at all, that would be good. If it didn’t, I would at least have completed a project and be able to move on.

It ultimately comes down to where writing fits into my life. I’m currently split on two major sides: writing and teaching. I’ve always been a teacher, even before that was my official job. In previous jobs, I always did the employee training. In primary and secondary school, I did the tutoring. In Boy Scouts, I trained the younger scouts all the time. When I took the full time teaching gig, I told my friends that I would have to become more teacher like. They all laughed and said I didn’t need any change.

The teaching gig is also a sure bet. My department has strong enrollment and is likely to in the future (I teach computer programming and databases). My students like me and give good reviews. My coworkers seem to like me and respect my opinion. The job pays well enough and I have a state pension slowly stacking up. It would take something significant to make leaving this job a good idea.

Then there is the writing. I still go crazy if I don’t write occasionally. Some story bits will keep me from sleeping if I don’t get them down. Like with the teaching, I’ve always been a storyteller. When my cousins and I gathered around, I was the one who had to keep them entertained with stories. Cooped up when the weather was too cold or too hot to be out, I blathered on about whatever monster would keep them most enthralled. Later, starting in junior high, I started writing the stories. I still have old notebooks from decades before and am only slightly appalled at the quality of my writing back then.

It’s likely that I will have to keep my day job and write as I find time. I may find publishing success or not. There is still some internal debate whether that is okay. There is still a part that wants my stories to change the world, to be sold for movies, and get death threats. The summer is young and the semester just ended. By September, the writer may yet beat the teacher. The idea of losing either of them makes me sad.

With no luck finding an agent, I looked into the possibilities of self publishing. Writer friends have suggested it as a good option. I’ve read a few things saying it was more respectable these days. It wouldn’t hurt to look.

I started with what I thought was a relatively older, well established self publishing service. In the interest of niceness, I won’t mention the name. I went to their website and looked over the options. Some looked suitable for my needs, so I dug further.

Everything on their website required that you give your phone number and have them call you. As a person who actually teaches people to build web applications, that struck me as suspicious. Normally, a business with a web presence will use that technology to facilitate customer interaction. Employees talking on the phone is very expensive but getting the customer’s money upfront through web forms and payment processing is cheap.

This led to more research. I searched for information about the company, particularly complaints about them. There were plenty. Many of the complaints suggested the company would take your money and then not contact you, or would just pass you from employee to employee until you got frustrated. Other complaints said the company stalled your project while pushing you to purchase other, very expensive services from them.

In fairness, there were statements saying they had no trouble with the company. These positive comments were a minority. The impression I got was that the company was more responsive if they thought you could make more money for them. Again, that was just an impression.

A little more looking found even more bad news. People claimed the company was owned by a separate company that is also the owner of many other self publishing avenues. It was stated that even respected traditional publishers would farm out their self publishing branches to this separate company. If the separate company was behind all of them, and they were as bad as the many complaints alluded, self publishing may be more treacherous than I imagined.

For the time being, I will still pursue traditional publishing. I would prefer that route anyway; I don’t have the marketing resources to push my book on my own. My efforts will focus on a more desirable pitch. With any luck, and few thousand more rejections, my novel will be well on its way to the remainders shelf.