It’s been a tough, frustrating day at work. You get home feeling you just managed to drag yourself through the door. On the fridge, a note, one of those “gone fishing” type of notes from your significant other. In fact, everyone has gone out for the night. You will have the whole place to yourself until sometime tomorrow. Now that’s a real pick-me-up!
You begin with a long shower… hot water, your favourite scented body wash and shampoo. You even spend that extra 3 minutes in the shower letting the deep conditioner steam into the pores of your tresses. Luxury! For dinner, there are some leftovers, some leftover cheesecake, some leftover ice cream and some leftover chocolate fudge cake. The cake will do for starters, an appetizer. Usually you have to sneak a piece before someone notices and nags you about those extra pounds. Tonight… you’re on your own! The stress of the day seeps out of you and the TV flicks on for whatever chick flick you find first.
The house is peaceful. It’s almost never peaceful. Even when it’s quiet you start to make cleaning lists in your head and soon you’re scrambling to get it all done again. Not tonight. Tonight the dim light as the sun fades just brings the peaceful silence that much closer. It’s comfortable.
So what is that creaky door sound? You know you’re the only one home.
If this were an ordinary chick fiction type of thing, the noise would be a surprise birthday party or something else nice and normal. But, this isn’t an ordinary piece of chick fiction writing… no… this is horror. Whatever the squeak turns out to be it won’t be nice, it may have good manners and it may even be pretty but, in the long run it won’t be nice at all.
I really think more women should be horror writers. The real horror is in ordinary things we can’t avoid: death, birth, marriage, politics, religion, health, food, shelter and clothing (the basic needs we can not live without). Horror isn’t some monster a kid thinks is under their bed. Horror is the reality of the family going through everyday life and not being able to cope with bills, children and those dust bunnies under the bed that no one has time to clean any more. Horror is not having enough from your pay cheque to buy groceries. Horror is being told there’s a cancer growing in parts of your body that have always made you feel like a woman. Horror is realizing you will become an orphan and be alone in the world when your Mother dies. Horror is …
What’s your horror? Write about it. You could be a horror writer, if you think about it, write about it…
Horror Writer’s Association
Horror Fiction Factor
Pretty Scary – For women in horror, by women in horror.
Cemetery Dance Publications – Horror and suspense magazine.
The House of Horror Writing Laboratory
Cafe Doom – Forum.
Bloodletters: Why Write Horror?
Dark Markets (Not updated in awhile).
Dark Echo Writer’s Workshop (No longer an active site).
Dark fantasy seems to fall into paranormal fiction/ chick lit versus real horror of the traditional kind.I’m not counting out dark fantasy, I read it, a lot. But, there is a line that crosses into horror. There is a gruesomeness, a deathbed humour and a wave good bye to hope that isn’t in fantasy that should be in horror. There is no guarantee of a happy ending.
Nocturne Author’s Blog
The following are the same group, on different sites:
- Facebook: The League of Extraordinary Paranormal Women
- BlogTalkRadio: Paranormal Women League
- MySpace: League of Paranormal Women