horror

Happy World Poetry Day!

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To celebrate World Poetry Day, I’ve written a short poem below. In the meantime, check out this great site to read some wonderful “poems on poems.”

Book Skin
by Sara J. Tantlinger

I remember the fable of your veins
and how your bleeding wrists tasted
like a burnt book across my tongue.

We were nameless bodies curved
inside bent pages, keeping love hidden
between an old spine as we inhaled
ink into our hearts like black oxygen.

Spiders scurried across the dust of bones
and left cobwebs inside our eyes, but we
knew addiction would flavor our choice
to crack open skin and read scarlet stories
that swam beneath our underwritten flesh.

Happy Women in Horror Month!

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Screen Shot 2015-01-31 at 10.12.23 PMHappy February! In honor of this month here are a couple suggestions of horror and other dark tales by some lovely authors you should most definitely check out.

The classics are a given, but I would be remiss not to mention them since they are some of my favorites, and forever will be.

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. If there were no other monster tales but this, the world would still be a good place to live. Shelley captures the bond between creator and creation in such a way that the reader isn’t sure to root for human or monster. Perfection. “If I cannot inspire love, I will cause fear!” -Frankenstein

Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice. Rice’s vampires are intriguing because she gives us the classic vampiric elements while still adding her own creative twists without losing the reader along the way. Rice creates vampires with the perfect balance of sensual bloodlust and interesting back stories. “Evil is a point of view. We are immortal. And what we have before us are the rich feasts that conscience cannot appreciate and mortal men cannot know without regret. God kills, and so shall we.” -Interview with the Vampire

The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson. Jackson brilliantly writes a Gothic ghost tale of a haunted house that becomes more of a main character than the other actual characters. And she has one of the greatest opening lines I have ever read. “No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more.” -The Haunting of Hill House

Screen Shot 2015-01-31 at 9.39.46 PMWuthering Heights by Emily Brontë because you’ll take my Gothic fiction away from me when I am dead and burned to 1,000 ashy pieces. “Catherine Earnshaw, may you not rest as long as I am living. You said I killed you–haunt me then. The murdered do haunt their murderers. I believe–I know that ghosts have wandered the earth. Be with me always–take any form–drive me mad. Only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you! Oh, God! It is unutterable! I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul!” -Wuthering Heights

And for some more contemporary reads. Have you checked out Stephanie M. Wytovich’s poetry collections Hysteria and Mourning Jewelry yet? (okay technically this is two recommendations, but they are both so damn good I can’t just pick one.) Wytovich’s voice offers a beautiful madness with the craft of her words as she creates a story within every poem she gifts to her readers. Some of my favorites from her collections include: Blood Whiskey, Black Bird, The Color White, Orchids Take the Children, Dare I Keep the Body, and Urns Make Me Drunk.

Another poetry collection I fell in love with recently is Sierra DeMulder’s The Bones Below. The concepts deal with the more quiet horrors of simply existing and going through life’s hoops. DeMulder brilliantly captures the brutal, dirty details of the human experience. My favorites from the collection include: When the Apocalypse Comes, Paper Dolls, Mrs. Dahmer, Sawdust, and Talking to God.

Deathless by Catherynne M. Valente consumed my soul. Holy Hades, this woman can write. If you’re a fan of beautiful prose that grabs you by the throat and refuses to let go until you sink wholly into the world from where it came, then read Catherynne Valente. Read. Consume. Become. “Be selfish and cruel and think nothing of them. I am selfish. I am cruel. My mate cannot be less than I. I will have you in my hoard, Marya Morevna, my black mirror.” -Deathless

Okay, and another multi-rec because if you haven’t read Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl, Dark Places, and Sharp Objects, then put that at the top of your to-read list. Her female protagonists are dirty, gritty, cunning, and fucking awesome because they are realistic. And these people saying Flynn’s characters are “too unlikable” to read must be the most well-behaved, cautious, and boring people imaginable. “I am a cutter, you see. Also a snipper, a slicer, a carver, a jabber. I am a very special case. I have a purpose. My skin, you see, screams. It’s covered with words – cook, cupcake, kitty, curls – as if a knife-wielding first-grader learned to write on my flesh.” -Sharp Objects

And if you need some music to rock out to while celebrating this wonderful occasion, try listening to Mz. Hyde herself Lzzy Hale of Halestorm, or that Natural Born Sinner Maria Brink. These ladies make bad look so good.

It’s Women in Horror Month. Sin a little with us. Drink some wine. Read something scary. Write something scarier.

In the meantime I’ll be working on a Valentine poem or two for you all to read later this month. *cackles*

Nice Girls Can Write Horror?

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Non-residency Student: So what genre do you write in?
Me: Horror.
Non-residency Student: Horror? Really? But you seem like such a nice person, why would you write horror?

*cue dramatic eye-rolling and desire to breathe fire*

The above conversation was one I had during my second Writing Popular Fiction (WPF) residency at Seton Hill University (SHU). The student was at the school in a different program, an older gentleman, and perfectly pleasant to talk to minus the aforementioned excerpt that made me want to jump up on a table and yell, “PRAISE SATAN THE DARK LORD” just for dramatic effect because “but you seem so nice” is one of the most irritating, condescending things you can say to a woman who writes horror. I don’t know if men in horror get told such things, but if they do I’m willing to bet it happens much less.

Awhile ago I read an article on the lovely Tracie McBride’s Exquisite Corpse blog titled “9 things female horror writers are sick of hearing” and what is the first bullet point? Answer: “But you seem so nice!”

After Non-residency Student fed me the “but you seem like a nice person” line, I responded with “nice people can write horror, too.” I don’t remember his response very much. It was mostly a splutter and a kind of “yeahh, but….” I’m not sure where this idea came from that “nice” girls don’t write horror, but it makes me want to sacrifice a goat or something. Should I be glowering in a dark corner wearing a shirt that says “Evil Shrew”? Does that mean I can write horror then? I’m terribly sorry to all the people I’ve been polite to. I’ll make sure to let you know I secretly dream about boiling your guts from now on.

Screen Shot 2015-01-16 at 9.11.19 PMIs there some standard personality that must be attached to writers of various genres? It’s always odd to confront a perception when it’s said to you candidly in a setting where, up until that point, you had been very comfortable in your surroundings. Let me move on from the older, white man who questioned the young female horror writer (can we dismantle the patriarchy yet?), and talk about how much I love my peers and mentors at SHUWPF because never would one of those fellow writers say, “You writer about blood and death? But you seem so nice!” Instead they would ask you about your work, and listen to you gush about the latest project you’re passionate about. What makes this community the absolute best is that your fellow writers will gush over your work with you. The atmosphere is encouraging, supportive, and safe. It doesn’t matter here if you write about death and blood, knights and castles, aliens and cyborgs, intense love affairs, and the works. The SHUWPF community is all-embracing. And we’re nice people. A little weird, often introverted, occasionally grumpy in the early morning after late nights, but always kind and supportive at the end of the day.