Why I Write Horror

I don’t think I need to rehash my horror writer origin story. I read the right Stephen King book at the right time in my life, and it made me want to write that kind of story. But then, that seems to be how my brain worked already, so writing horror stories was easy for me. That’s not what this article is about.

This is why I write horror in a horrible world.

The real world sucks right now. Scary shit happens to people every day. In the face of all that tragedy, I believe in the power of stories to help make sense of it, to entertain, distract, escape, whatever you need to do. I believe that stories can bring us together, that everyone tells the same stories, the same themes, the same kind of dreaming, over and over. Stories reveal our commonality, our humanity. They are our doorways to empathy and understanding outside lived experience.

But horror stories? Really?!

Yes, really.

The real world sucks right now. Its tragedies seem too big, its horror seems too overwhelming. I believe in the power of stories to help make sense of the world. So it stands to reason that horror stories are uniquely able to make sense of a tragic and terrible world. The metaphors of horror stories are easier to understand than the real world. The stories can allow catharsis often absent from the real world.

My story, In God’s Own Image, is about a Shape that has retained some of her memory after God has Re-formed the world, stripping identity away from its human inhabitants. The Shape tries to hang onto her memories, her identity, but other Shapes find her and finish the job God started. The end of the story is the Shape holding the wig she had worn, trying to think why it was significant to her, but unable to remember.

My story, Mrs. Leary’s Home for the Living Impaired, is about a woman caring for her zombie father-in-law. In her world, zombies are an unremarkable fact of life. After finding that she is unable to care for her father-in-law after an injury, she takes him to a home for zombies. The story ends with the father-in-law, alone in his new room, holding a photograph of him and his son’s family and staring out the window.

Starting to sense a pattern yet?

Well, then you’re one step ahead of me, because I didn’t see it until I was at a convention selling the anthologies these two stories were published in. Then it hit me that, while superficially different, the two stories were far more similar than different.

Which makes sense, if you know what I’m actually afraid of.

I am afraid of losing my memory and the dissolution of identity that goes along with that. So it makes sense that I would write about what scares me the most as a way to try to make sense of it, or maybe just come to terms with it. And why I continue to write about it.

Codename: Memories, which I recently pulled off the shelf and started flipping through in a casual, I-might-do-some-editing/developing-soon kind of way is one thousand percent about memory loss, loss of identity, and the impact on others. Except this time, I knew what I was doing, so I wrote about it on purpose. And the story has taken on a new urgency for me.

If you’re a regular reader, you know I have been silent for a little over a month. On October 27, my dad had a stroke. It worsened issues that he was already dealing with along the lines of Alzheimer’s dementia. So basically, everything I’ve ever been afraid of, staring me dead in the eyes. With a great support system, I have been able to manage my unreasoning terror in the face of needing to make practical decision for my dad’s care. But it’s been very hard.

Has writing the stories I have made it easier for me? Unsure. Will it make it easier for anyone else going through similar circumstances? Still unsure. But it might.

Because I still believe in the power of stories. Even horror stories. Especially horror stories.