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Women in Horror Month: Guest Post by Colleen Wanglund– Women Writers of Horror

Yes, I know it’s March 1. Believe me, this guest post is worth extending Women in Horror Month for an extra day.

Colleen Wanglund is a reviewer, writer, and passionate reader of (and about) horror, both in cinema and on the printed page. She reviews books for MonsterLibrarian.com and Horror Fiction Review (among other places) and writes about Asian horror films as the Geisha of Gore for Cinema Knife Fight. In short, she is one of the awesome women of horror this month celebrates.

Because Women in Horror Month usually focuses on horror movies, Colleen wanted to make sure that the women writers of horror and their books got some recognition too. She has written a fantastic piece that is essential reading for anyone seeking out excellent women authors of horror and their books, from Frankenstein to the present. These are her personal choices, not a canonical list, but you can rest assured she has read every one of these books and authors, and many, many more. If you love to read horror, any horror, or if you’re looking to specifically seek out great women writers in the genre, read what she’s written, print it out, and, if you are a reader’s advisory librarian, keep it with your Reader’s Advisory Guide to Horror.

 

 

Women in Horror

 

February is Women in Horror Recognition Month, thanks to a cool chick and my friend Hannah Neurotica. While most of the focus tends to be on the film industry (after all it is a boys’ club) I’m pushing female horror authors. I recently saw a comment left on a particular forum where someone had asked for some recommendations for female authors. The comment in question was a response and went something like “….it is an unassailable fact that men are better writers…” and it really pissed me off. Really? You think across the board that men write better than women? Well, tell me, my friend, who have you been reading? I can name dozens of female horror authors that write stories that are just as disturbing, if not more so. Personally, I believe women can tap into the deep well of our emotions because we tend to lead with them, whether they are positive or negative. This gives women a perspective that men don’t necessarily have.

Let me begin with the obvious. Mary Shelley. Without her there would be no Frankenstein or his monster. There have been countless books and movies that use Shelley’s central theme against playing God, whether it’s creating life or destroying it. Sadly, when her novel Frankenstein was first published, it was done so anonymously, because it was believed that no one would read the book if it were written by a woman.

Then there’s Anne Rice. Lestat is easily one of my favorite literary characters. In the third book of the Vampire Chronicles, Queen of the Damned (Ballantine Books 1989), Rice presents one of the best origin stories I’ve ever read for vampires, and Maharet cuts an imposing figure. How about Shirley Jackson and her novel The Haunting of Hill House (Penguin Books 1959)? It’s been adapted into a few successful films over the years. Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca (Penguin Books 1969) was adapted into a film by Alfred Hitchcock. Two short stories by du Maurier were adapted into Hitchcock’s The Birds (1963) and Don’t Look Now (1973) which has turned up on a few scariest horror movie lists.

I also think you should be reading Linda Addison, the first African-American to win a Bram Stoker Award—and she’s won three for her horror poetry collections—Consumed, Reduced to Beautiful Grey Ashes (Space and Time 2001), Being Full of Light, Insubstantial (Space and Time 2007), and How to Recognize A Demon has Become Your Friend (CreateSpace 2011). Elizabeth Massie’s short story “Abed” is one of the most disturbing zombie stories I’ve ever read—by a male or female author. Massie’s Bram Stoker Award-winning novel Sineater (CompletelyNovel 2010) has been re-published for a new audience. Monica O’Rourke’s Jasmine & Garlic (Biting Dog Publications 2011) was so gory and violent it has forever changed how I approach a visit to the gynecologist!

There’s Carole Lanham’s collection The Whisper Jar (Morrigan Books 2011) with its subtle but frightening horror themes, including “The Blue Word”, another very unsettling zombie story with a twist that you won’t see coming. Suzanne Robb’s Z-Boat (CreateSpace 2011) is another great zombie story with a twist—and a relevant message about overpopulation and dwindling resources. Tonia Brown expertly covers all of horror lit’s sub-genres, and Jessy Marie Roberts wrote one of my favorite short stories ever about a woman who literally puts her all into a special Halloween dinner, titled “Pumpkin Soup”.

You should also seek out:

Poppy Z. Brite—Exquisite Corpse (Touchstone 1997), Drawing Blood (Dell 1994)

Mary Sangiovanni—The Hollower (Leisure Books 2007), Found You (Leisure Books 2008)

Carol Weekes—The Color of Bone (Genius Publishing 2012), Dead Reflections (JournalStone 2013)

Lisa Morton—The Castle of Los Angeles (Gray Friar Press 2010), Night-Mantled: The Best of Wily Writers (Wily Writers 2011)

Chesya Burke—Dark Faith (Apex Publications 2010), Dark Dreams: A Collection of Horror and Suspense by Black Writers (Kensington 2004)

Yvonne Navarro—Music of the Spears: Aliens Series (Spectra 1996), Deep Cuts: Mayhem, Menace and Misery (Evil Jester Press 2013)

Melanie Tem—The Deceiver (Leisure Books 2003), Slain in the Spirit (Leisure Books 2002)

Billie Sue Mosiman—Widow (Berkley 1995), Red Moon Rising: A Vampire Novel (DAW 2003)

Caitlin R. Kiernan—The Drowning Girl (Roc Trade 2012), Tales of Pain and Wonder (Subterranean Press 2008)

Gemma Files—Kissing Carrion (Prime Books 2003), The Worm in Every Heart (Prime Books 2006)

Sheri Gambino—Vicious Verses and Reanimated Rhymes: Zany Zombie Poetry for the Undead Head (Coscom Entertainment 2009), Rellik (2011)

Damien Walters Grintalis—Ink (Samhain Publishing 2012), Arcane (CreateSpace 2011)

Fran Friel—Mama’s Boy and Other Dark Tales (Apex Publications 2008), “Wings With Hot Sauce” (The Horror Library 2005)

Tananarive Due—The Between (Harper Perennial 1996), Domino Falls: A Novel (Atria Books 2013)

Lucy Snyder—Chimeric Machines (Creative Guy Publishing 2009), Shotgun Sorceress (Del Rey Books 2010)

Alexandra Sokoloff—The Unseen (St. Martin’s Press 2009), The Harrowing (St. Martin’s Press 2006)

Sarah Pinborough—The Taken (Dorchester Publishing 2007), Breeding Ground (Leisure Books 2006)

Sarah Langan—The Keeper (HarperTorch 2006), Audrey’s Door (Harper Publishing 2009)

Tonia Brown—Badass Zombie Road Trip (Books of the Dead Press 2012), Skin Trade: An Historical Horror (CreateSpace 2012)

Jessy Marie Roberts—Bloody Carnival (Pill Hill Press 2010), Kinberra Down (Pill Hill Press 2010; with Eric S. Brown)

I hope the women I left out will forgive me.

Do yourself a favor and read some of these fantastic women. You will find women have been greatly overlooked in the horror industry, whether it’s film or literature. I’ve heard it said that these women “write like a man” and I guess if that’s what you need to hear to check out female authors, then so be it—but don’t say I didn’t warn you.

~Colleen Wanglund

Posted on March 1, 2013 by , Reply

Women in Horror Month: In Praise of Scribbling Women (and Louisa May Alcott)!

It’s Women in Horror Month, that time of year when we recognize the amazing women who celebrate and create the horror genre. When it comes to horror fiction, there don’t seem to be very many names that appear in the past. Of course, there’s always Mary Shelley, but, while she was exceptional in many ways, she certainly wasn’t the only woman of her time writing gothic and horror stories .

Anyone who is surprised by this hasn’t read Little Women. Here’s Jo March, the most unconventional of the four March sisters, burning up with her desire to write:

Every few weeks she would shut herself up into her room, put on her scribbling suit, and “fall into a vortex,” as she expressed it, writing away at her novel with all her heart and soul, for till that was finished she could find no peace.

Jo’s family is much more supportive of her than most families were: writing was not only considered unsuitable for women, but unhealthy (and that’s literal– if you want to read a seriously twisted horror story, try Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s semi-autobiographical story “The Yellow Wallpaper”). But at the same time, the reality of daily life meant that women somehow had to support their families, and many of them did it by writing (KC Redding-Gonzales has written about it here).  The writing that earned a steady paycheck, though, was pulp fiction for magazines and newspapers– “sensational stories” that gave their readers thrills, chills, romance, and murder. So that’s what Jo does. Her publisher “rejected any but thrilling tales” so that’s what she wrote, but with no name attached. Little Women‘s author, Louisa May Alcott, supported her family by writing sensational stories for ten years under a pen name, including a novel, A Long and Fatal Love Chase. But in the end, conventional Louisa won out, and, as in Little Women, where Jo finally gives up her writing, she stopped (this review from Stephen King has more on Louisa).

Alcott, Gilman, and the fictional Jo are just three examples from that time, though (even Frankenstein was first published under a pseudonym)– and we can’t know, really, how many women supplied horror, romance, suspense, ghost stories, and gothic fiction for pulp magazines, newspapers, and even three volume novels, since so many of them, like Jo, left their work unsigned, or like Alcott, wrote under a pen name. They did it because they loved writing, or needed money, or both, and whether they were proud of their work or ashamed of it, these scribbling women shaped popular culture. Many of them may be nameless, but they shouldn’t be forgotten.

Posted on February 7, 2013 by , Reply

Teen Read Week: It Came From The Library! Kenneth Oppel on Frankenstein

Kenneth Oppel is the author of  two novels (so far) about the young Victor Frankenstein, This Dark Endeavor (reviewed here) and Such Wicked Intent(reviewed here). He has also written many other books, and received a Printz Honor Award for his novel Airborn in 2004. We asked him to share what influenced him to write the story of Victor Frankenstein. It was pretty neat to learn that Frankenstein is one of his favorite books! You can see what he wrote back to us below.

 

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 From Kenneth Oppel:

 

Frankenstein is one of my favourite novels, and I wish I’d written it. Unfortunately, it was written two hundred years ago by a 19-year old genius called Mary Shelley. Arguably, Frankenstein is the first science fiction novel, the first monster novel, the first horror novel. Not only is it an incredibly gripping read but, like all the best literature, it tackles weighty themes: reckless human ambition, the ethical implications of scientific pursuit, the creator’s responsibilities to his creations, and the perils of really, really bad parenting. All things that are still relevant today.

 

A couple of years ago, while re-reading the novel, I was struck by how quickly Victor Frankenstein’s youth is described – and one line in particular stuck out: “No youth could have passed more happily than mine.” Now, remember that this is a kid who goes on to dig up corpses, chop them up, sew the body parts back together, jolt them with electricity in the hopes of revivifying them, and creating life from death. Doesn’t sound like a very happy youth to me. What might have happened to Victor to lead him to become the “mad scientist” we all know? That, I thought, would make an interesting story.

 

A few pages later, Shelley goes on to give a helpful clue: “I entered with the greatest diligence into the search for… the elixir of life…. What glory would attend the discovery, if I could banish disease from the human frame, and render man invulnerable to any but a violent death!”

 

Right away I had an image of a teenager who was curious, ambitious, arrogant, and probably obsessive. Obsessions are a staple of literature — every great character has one. Whether it’s a desire or an aspiration, or the simple will to survive, there’s something that drives every hero — and every reader to keep turning pages.

 

Sixteen year old Victor Frankenstein is a fantastic character to work with. He’s the embryonic form of the man who will go on to dig up corpses, chop them up, suture then back together and jolt them with electricity to try to create life from death. Now that’s an obsession! When you read about people who create a work of genius, whether it’s an invention or a work of art, there’s often a strain of compulsion or even madness that motivates them and keeps them working tirelessly towards their goal — often at great emotional cost to themselves and those around them. Off the top of my head it could be as various as Howard Hughes (with his movies, or his Spruce Goose), or Francis Ford Coppola (Apocalypse Now) or Philip K Dick (who wrote himself to death).

 

Victor’s search for The Elixir of Life makes for an excellent quest. But it seemed to me there had to be something more behind it. What if Victor needed the elixir for a personal purpose? Was he himself ill? Or maybe a friend, parent – or a beloved sibling?

 

And so, in my alternative Frankenstein mythology, I decided that Victor Frankenstein had a twin brother, Konrad — who has an entirely different personality, and is a much steadier sort than Victor — and just that much better at everything.

 

It was tremendous fun to learn about the real Mary Shelley and her sources for Frankenstein. I’m sure plenty of my readers will pick up on all the references to the real Mary Shelley and the fascinating and tragedy-filled life she led. From my point of view, all this material was source material for me. I used Mary Shelley’s family as a basis for Victor’s – and stole characteristics from her husband (Percy Shelley) and friend Lord Byron to build Victor’s personality and backstory. When you’re reimagining a literary classic, you want to preserve the tone of the original, and this was one way I could do it.

 

And I loved writing Victor. As a writer I think you strive to create characters that exercsie the full range of human behaviour and emotion — and often these things are not heroic or noble or attractive. Victor is certainly a larger than life characters. He’s smart, arrogant, rash, selfish, but also loyal and loving and brave — in short, he’s no more an antihero than most of us on the planet. It’s huge fun to let loose a character with a temper, but also with a passion and a plan. I think you sympathize with Victor’s sense of inferiority around his perfect identical twin, and any reader would sympathize with someone who tries so hard to be good at things, in the shadow of another. Sometimes envy makes people do rotten things. So Victor’s not always nice, but you always want to watch him — and I think you want him to get what he wants, even if it’s a bit appalling. I mean, he’s Victor Frankenstein, not Harry Potter.

Posted on October 15, 2012 by , 1 comment
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