Today brings focus to Rie Sheridan Rose, who always has keen insights on the horror genre and what makes a horror story work!
Welcome to Fall Into Horror with Mocha Memoirs Press!
Mocha Memoirs Press is celebrating the new Fall season by showcasing their love of horror and the authors who write it. Please welcome RIE SHERIDAN ROSE as she shares her thoughts on fall and horror.
Writing horror is about exploring the visceral as opposed to the ephemeral. I really enjoy writing fantasy and Steampunk, but writing horror gives you the chance to explore a completely different set of parameters. What lies beneath the conventions of society and humanity the underbelly of the world. There is something satisfying about looking beneath the expected societal norms and it is more politically correct to do it on paper. In horror, you can be a serial killer, you can plan a murder, you can be a vampire or a zombie or kill them if you prefer.
It is a chance to embrace all your darker impulses. The freedom to be as vicious and cruel as you want without actually hurting anyone. And it is a great way to take out your frustrations with life and people without doing something you will regret later.
Since you are speculating in the deepest sense of the word (I hope) you can explore situations like I do in my story, Bloody Rain where one possible solution to the Jack the Ripper mystery is considered that I had personally never seen beforeâand hope you find interesting if you choose to look into it.
Let me walk you through an example. My story in The Grotesquerie House Call began from an idea that I had when I overheard a young man in scrubs on his cell phone. I don’t remember what he actually said, but it got my imagination working. Who was on the other end of the line? Why was it important that this young man talk to him/her? What difference would it make to his life if he were rejected by whomever he was talking to?
I decided he was talking to a doctor he wished to work with in a clinic. Okay, what was the next logical thing to know? What did the doctor say?
The doctor rejected him.
What was the next logical step? Because he was on the phone so long, he was late getting back to work and was fired.
His life was going downhill fast.
What would be the result? He sees a news report that the doctor will be opening a free clinic for hurricane victims. He decides to go volunteer to help.
The doctor rejects him again.
And then
So, the key to writing horror is to take an incident and look at what can happen as a result of that incident, the most twisted, dark, possibly unnatural, but logical conclusion you can think of.
Zombies appear in your neighborhood. What happens next? That is the basis of horror.
THE GROTESQUERIE
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Mocha Memoirs Press, LLC is a genre-oriented publishing company. Their vision is to provide an outlet for outstanding speculative and romance stories that often fall beneath the radar of traditional publishing houses. They seek to provide quality stories that invigorate the readerâs literary palette like a good, strong coffee. Like great coffee houses, they offer a variety of flavors. They publish stories in the following genres: science fiction, fantasy, horror, and romance, including the sub-genres of steampunk, cyberpunk, diesel punk, alternate history, weird westerns, and mash-ups.
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I loved Bloody Rain!
I’m a great fan of thinking horror over straight up gore for no real reason. Not that people don’t kill for no reason (i.e. someone snaps), it’s a reason I don’t go for slashers. But when you have to think about it or that creeping horror is there (Lovecraftian or Ghost or creatures etc) the ability to break a mind as oppose to someone simply losing their life – that makes all the difference.