A Writer's Tale

All of which goes to prove that the publishers are right. Horror doesn’t sell.

When the books don’t sell like hotcakes, the publisher blames the writer.

So much for why publishers despise us.

But what about the general public? Here is my “deep” answer.

The general public probably reviles horror writers (except for… ) because we are often dealing with taboo subjects that make them nervous. Horror stories dwell on such things as torture, deformity, madness, dismemberment, rape, incest, beastiality, cannibalism, and bad ways of dying. We are the specialists of the worst case scenerio.” We are tour guides leading readers into dangerous, frightening territories. In general, we write nasty stuff. It repels a lot of readers. But it also attracts them.

Many readers probably feel especially uncomfortable if they find themselves drawn to such sordid material. Good people are not supposed to enjoy reading about these things. If they do like it, many of them undoubtedly suffer feelings of guilt.

Reading horror is like looking at pornography.

Plenty of people might want to do it, but they know it would be wrong. It would be dirty.

They should be ashamed of themselves for liking it.

And if they’re caught, what would other people think of their dirty little secret?

As a result, these good people scorn horror novels.

They scorn horror writers as if we are smut peddlers… peddling smut they would love to get their hands on if they could only do so without risking embarrassment, damnation, or ridicule.

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN! ATTENTION, PLEASE!

I HAVE AN IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT TO MAKE!

I have just stumbled onto the reason that, while most horror writers are reviled, the mega-stars of horror are revered.

They provide a culturally acceptable outlet for those who long to wallow in horror.

“I’ll go to them!” the readers say to themselves (subconsciously I don’t imagine they realize this is going on). “That way, I’ll still be able to get my share of goosebumps and thrills, still be able to relish the joys of dismemberment, rape, incest, cannibalism, vampires the whole voyeuristic nine yards but with no risk to my self-esteem because these books are bestsellers! Everyone reads them. If everyone is doing it, there’s no reason for me to feel guilty, no reason for me to feel as if I’m a slumming illiterate wallowing in trash.”

“Trash is what the rest of them write: the Big Three write literature.”

* * *

That was my “deep” answer to the question, “Why do general readers hate us but love the Big Three?” Here is another answer, not so deep, but perhaps no less valid.

Too many “horror writers” do turn out poorly written, empty headed, violent, gory, depressing, mean-spirited, immoral, unbelievable swill about nonsense. If that weren’t bad enough, much of it is boring.

For years, (once you’ve eliminated the shelf-loads of books by Koontz. King and Rice) the “horror sections” of bookstores have been loaded with books so poorly conceived and written that they should never have been published in the first place.

Certainly, excellent horror novels have also been published.

But they are surrounded by horribly written, annoying, boring junk.

If as a reader, you take a chance on a horror novel by a writer you’ve never heard of, you stand about a 20 to 1 chance of wishing you hadn’t.

I am a horror writer. I am a fan of horror literature. I love to lay my hands on a book that’ll pull me in and scare the hell out of me.

I almost never buy a novel from any bookstore’s “horror section.”

In my head, there is a small, select list of horror writers I trust. I pretty much stick with them, because I’ve been burnt too many times. It’ll be a fairly cold day in hell before I snatch up a “horror book” by someone whose name I don’t know.

Because it’s almost sure to stink.

The problem is, nearly all of us are tainted by the stink.

Horror writers such as Dean Koontz, Stephen King and Anne Rice managed to rise above the stink because they wrote stuff that was so strikingly good that publishers got behind them in spite of their subject matter. They rose above the “horror genre,” and into the fresh air of mainstream acceptance.

The only way for the rest of us to get un-tainted is to achieve bestseller status, which is pretty hard to do if you’re down there on shelves loaded with crappy horror novels. It’s a Catch-22.

Which is why so many of us turn away from horror.

Some of the best horror writers in this country are now writing mainstream novels, espionage novels, crime novels, medical thrillers, romance novels, suspense novels, historical novels, juveniles, movie scripts, comic books, computer games, etc. Some have apparently quit writing altogether.

I could name them.

I suspect they got tired of living in the ghetto.

Got tired of being scorned, ignored and underpaid.