Horror Writers Are Terr… …ibly Well Adjusted, Actually - Guest Post From Author Marcus Caine

Horror Writers Are Terr……ibly Well Adjusted, Actually.

Exhibit A: Me, super average, so not scary

Ah, the image of the horror writer: shaved head, scraggly goatee, eyes chock full of madness, itchy teeth that are just ready to rip right into you.  Oh wait, that’s Shel Silverstein.  OK, then how about Stephen King?  He looks scary, right?  Well, maybe if you’re afraid of accountants.  Really, I can’t think of a single horror writer who looks the part, or acts it.  In fact, we horror writers are a pretty normal bunch who just happen to enjoy writing things that terrify the ever loving crap out of you.  Then why do we do it?  Why do these seemingly average people want to write about ghosts and zombies and blood and guts?  Because we are scared, just like the rest of you, and this is how we deal with it.

Exhibit B: Scary as f***, not a horror writer

We take the things which scare us and make them supernatural and therefore impossible, or at least less likely.  Scared of serial killers?  Then make them supernatural guys who can kill you in your dreams, or only if you are visiting Camp Crystal Lake.  Scared of disease?  Then how about a disease that makes you immortal, with some caveats, or makes you a superhuman wolf monster.  Scared of society collapsing?  Well, instead of looters and cannibals and rapists, oh my, let’s have slow moving creatures that are already dead, therefore it is perfectly OK to kill them, recommended even.  Scared of invasion?  Aliens.  You get the picture.  By adding this extra layer of implausibility around that which we fear we are able to keep it at a distance, and therefore sleep at night.

But sometimes we do write about the things that scare us; serial killers and disease and collapse.  Sometimes we don’t include the supernatural.  Sometimes we face our fears head on.  Sort of.  When we have serial killers in fiction, they are brilliant Lecterish madmen with a twisted code of honor who kill you before creating artistic displays with your body.  Or they are mindless Shatner mask wearing killing machines with no real sense of anything.  They aren’t your neighbors or co-workers or that uncle that let you taste his beer.  And the people they kill are never really You.  The victims in fiction are never the people you would associate yourself with.  They are always someone who is somehow inferior to you, intellectually or morally.  They are the babysitter who ran up the stairs instead of out the front door.  The jock who checks to see what that noise was, leaving the relative safety of the group.  The lovers who’s tryst in the woods sealed their fate.  The kids who are drinking or doing drugs.  The guy who’s being an obnoxious jerk when we are all trying to get along and kill the zombies.  If We were in Their position, We would have done something differently, and therefore lived.  As the recent movie Cabin in the Woods so brilliantly and subtly points out, They deserved to be killed.  We need Them to deserve to be killed so that we can get a thrill out of it without feeling guilty.  And so we can know with certainty that They are not Us.

Finally, sometimes we just go ahead and become the things we fear.  Vampires were once rotting corpses that gorged on blood.  Werewolves were fearsome out of control beast who killed and ate the people they loved.  Ghosts were miserable wraiths who haunted you to madness.  These were once the things we feared.  Now they are beautiful aristocratic lovers, noble people who become majestic beasts, departed souls who just need to take care of one last thing before they go.  We’ve turned the monsters of the past into sparkly demigods and super heroes who can control themselves in hulk/beast form and lost loves who will help you make some pottery because we no longer want to fear them, we want to be them.

And of course you read our stuff because, like us, you want a thrill, albeit a safe one.  You want to be scared in a way that you can rationalize and say to yourself ‘You’re being ridiculous, just go to sleep’, ‘That can’t really happen’ or at the very least ‘That wouldn’t happen to me’.  You don’t want to be scared in a way that will mess you up for life.  You want that layer of implausibly, that safety net of unlikeliness.  And so you read our work, and while we are exorcising our demons in ink you are doing the same, and together we are being thrilled but coming out the victor instead of the victim.  We are helping you confront your own fears as we confront our own, a kind of group therapy.  In a way, we are acting as a surrogate psychiatrist.  Now I’m afraid your hour is up.  That’ll be $300.

Marcus Caine was born in a small town in Texas and he hasn’t completely recovered from that. When he’s not stuck at the day job he likes to read just about everything, write horror books and short stories, plan for the zombie apocalypse, and try new beers. Sometimes he manages to do all those things at the same time.

Want a vicarious thrill?  Try out his book Meme or his short stories The Body or The Remington.