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Women in Horror Month: A Look Back– Romancing the Groan by Tonia Brown

Editor’s note: This post was first published on February 14, 2014, but it’s such a perfect read for both Women in Horror Month and Valentine’s Day that I’m giving you another opportunity to read it.

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It’s Valentine’s Day! That makes it a PERFECT opportunity to talk about something problematic for women writing in the horror genre– the categorization of anything paranormal written by a woman, especially if it contains romantic elements, as part of the romance or urban fantasy genres.

Er, no. Take a look at this, inspired by a book written by a woman.

By definition, a romance novel has to have an HEA (happily ever after) at the end.

In spite of the hand holding and the bridal gown, this doesn’t qualify.

Yet it is an issue. In the recent discussion on sexism and horror, sponsored by the HWA, Sephera Giron made this comment:

“It’s always assumed I write romance no matter how much black I’m wearing in a bookstore or convention!!!! Where I said I write paranormal romance in the above post, I actually don’t but people perceived it as such because I wrote six books in a series for Ravenous Romance. The romance people wouldn’t read it because they thought it was horror. The horror people wouldn’t read it because they thought it was romance. It’s really erotica with a coven of witches (hey if you like Coven, you’ll probably like these) but everyone likes to pretend that since I’m a woman, it must be paranormal romance. I’m not sure I’ve ever written a happy ending yet.”

Can horror contain romantic elements? Absolutely. Psychology Today tells us that love is addictive, obsessive, and makes us prone to recklessness. We see plenty of all of that in horror fiction, from The Phantom of the Opera to Married With Zombies. And horror with romantic elements is hardly limited to women writers. Phantom was penned by a man, Gaston Leroux.  and adapted into a musical by Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber. If you’re looking for a more recent example, well, there’s this book called Lisey’s Story…

 

So on that note, here’s a guest post by horror author Tonia Brown, that touches on just this topic. Warning, it’s NSFW.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

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Romancing the Groan

By Tonia Brown

    It only took a few seconds of prompting for Coil’s lust to kick his worry in the ass and take command. He pushed her to the couch again and continued toying with her. 

“If I wanted a gentleman,” she whispered, “I wouldn’t have worn my naughty undies.”

Coil growled in approval.

“Do you want to see ‘em?” she asked.

“Oh yeah,” he said and leaned back.

Laura  fluttered her dress over her hips, flashing him an eyeful of pink lace before sliding the fabric in place once more. “What do you want to see now?”

“Your naughty undies.”

“Again?” Laura grabbed the hem of her dress, ready to flash him a second time.

Coil snatched up her hand and shook his head, his grin as wild and mischievous as that of a horny teenager. “I wanna see ‘em, all right. I wanna see ‘em on the floor.”

Laura matched his smile with one just as dirty. “That’s more like it. Come here, you.”

Coil fell into her seduction with a joyful ease.

He considered it an hour well spent.

 

The above section is a snippet from my novel Sundowners. From the clip, you could imagine the book to be an erotic romance, or an urban romance, or even a period romance. Steampunk romance? Romantic comedy? The point being, one may assume it is a romance. But wait, here is another snippet from the same novel:

 

She took up the razor and turned it on herself. Naomi cut away her fair share with a few determined slices, not to mention a whole lot of wincing and hissing. Using the corner of the razor, she peeled back the edge of her square, just a bit. She grasped this loose end of flesh and yanked, pulling along the guidelines she had worked into her own calf. The bloody square came away in one piece, then slipped from her trembling fingers with a wet slop to the floor. No bother. A little dirt wouldn’t make it any worse for wear. She planned on washing the whole quilt when she was done anyway.

Lightheaded and nauseated, Naomi picked up her needle and went back to work.

The voice guided her tired hands, assuring her that this was the right thing to do.

For the community.

 

Wait up now? How can the first part be sexy and this be … horror? Simple enough, it is a horror novel with romantic elements. Two of the characters rekindle an old passion and end up exploring those feelings as well as each other all across the pages. Feelings? Romantic sex? Love? Those aren’t elements of horror! What are you thinking, woman!

When folks envision horror, they often forget that romance can play an important element of the story. Yet, many characters in horror novels are driven by romantic intentions. Whether it’s a young man trying to rescue his lady love from the undead, or a wife seeking her husband’s soul in hell, romance can be a valid and powerfully driving plot point. Regardless of this, there is a notion somewhere in the horror community that romance has no place in horror. As if you stop feeling just because there is a nameless terror chasing you down, ready to tear your heart out and eat it. If anything, you feel harder at these times. It is common knowledge that battling stress brings folks closer together, and when folks get close, they can easily develop feelings for one another. Just replace the word ‘stress’ with words like ‘demons’ or ‘zombies’ or ‘Cthulhian nightmares’ and you see how this can work.

More importantly, a romantic subplot brings you, the reader, closer to the characters. Romance brings out the vulnerability of a person. You think it’s hard to escape from the undead? Try opening up to a living person, trusting them with your heart and soul, much less finding the bravery it takes to get naked with them! When a writer gives a hard bitten, zombie fighting, gun slinging guy a romantic interest in the midst of his badassery, it creates a whole new dimension to his makeup. He isn’t just a gun toting killing machine anymore; suddenly he possesses real depth and emotion. Romance humanizes characters. Real people fall in love, why wouldn’t characters who are trying to be real?

Of course there are those who say that as a female writer it is inevitable that I add romance to a story. Believe it or not, I have been told that many, many times before. Recently someone said about my work, “You are a woman, so no surprise there is romance in the book.” It is true many women use romance in horror as a plot point or a driving emotion for their characters. In fact, the list Popular Horror Romance Novels on Goodreads is dominated by women. Authors such as Anne Rice, Karina Halle, and Poppy Z Brite. But romance in horror isn’t exclusive to females. Many male authors work love into the pages of blood soaked terror. Consider Stephen King, the Mack Daddy of horror. He often includes romantic elements in his tales. ‘Salem’s Lot featured a pretty hot and heavy romance between Ben and Susan all while they are battling a master vampire and his thrall. Hell, Lisey’s Story is a love letter to a happy marriage.

My point with all of this is to encourage readers to seek out romantic horror, and encourage other writers to explore romantic subplots.  Real characters deserve real emotions. We don’t stop loving when our lives get difficult. Why would they?

 

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Image of Tonia Brown   Tonia Brown is a southern author with a penchant for Victorian dead things. She lives in the backwoods of North Carolina with her genius husband and an ever fluctuating number of cats. She likes fudgesicles and coffee, though not always together. When not writing she raises unicorns and fights crime with her husband under the code names Dr. Weird and his sexy sidekick Butternut.

Tonia Brown’s short stories can be found in such anthologies as Horror Library, Vol. 5 (2013 Cutting Block Press), D.O.A. Extreme Horror Anthology (2011 Blood Bound Books), Best New Zombie Tales (Vol.3) (2011 Books of the Dead Press), and Bigfoot Terror Tales Vol. 1: Scary Stories of Sasquatch Horror (2012 Coscom Entertainment), among others.  Her novels and novellas include Badass Zombie Road Trip (2012 Books of the Dead Press), Lucky Stiff: Memoirs of an Undead Lover (2010, 2013 CreateSpace), the Railroad! Collection, and the Triple Shot collection.

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Interested in learning more about Tonia? Visit Tonia Brown’s Amazon page, her blog,  www.thebackseatwriter.com, or make friends with her at: www.facebook.com/backseatwriter.

 

Posted on February 14, 2016 by , Reply

Women in Horror Month: A Look Back

An enormous amount of content was produced by and about women in horror during Women in Horror Month, 2014. I linked to a lot of this content via our Facebook page  However, since a lot of people don’t visit our Facebook page, I’m going to provide a list of links to places I visited and shared during the month that are related to WiHM(I really recommend that you visit there often, because not only will you get all kinds of awesome content that comes my way, but there are also links to all our blog posts– not just this blog, but the one for Reading Bites, and the one that notifies you of new reviews. So it’s a great way to see everything current).

Enjoy!

Mary Shelley Letters Discovered in Essex Archive-– The Guardian, January 15

Flowers in the Attic: The Value of Young Reading Perspectives-– Kelly Jensen, BookRiot

The Ghost of V.C. Andrews: The Life, Death, and Afterlife of the Mysterious “Flowers in the Attic” Author—  Kate Aurthur at Buzzfeed. For the first time, the family and colleagues of the author speak out to provide a fuller picture of her life.

The Literary Gothic— A web guide to biographical information on early supernaturalist authors, set to close down in June

Please Don’t Bring Me Flowers— Allison Peters, BookRiot

20 Black Women in Horror Writing— Sumiko Saulson. Essential reading for the month of February, for multiple reasons. Saulson also published a short ebook on black women horror writers in February of this year, available for free at Smashwords.

Women in Horror Recognition Month Facebook page

Gothic Pioneer Ann Radcliffe May Have Been Inspired by Mother-In-Law— The Guardian, January 30

Women Who Write Lovecraft by Silvia Moreno Garcia of Innsmouth Press

RA for All: Horror— Becky Siegel Spratford asks who your favorite woman writer in horror is.

Ania Ahlborn’s interview with J. Lincoln Fenn

The Rise of the Women in Horror Movement: Admirers, Haters, and Everything In-Betweeners at Brutal as Hell

Statistics on genre writer submissions by gender at Tor UK, by editor Julie Crisp. Crisp’s statistics demonstrated that women submit fewer manuscripts than men, at least at Tor UK, so sexism by the publisher isn’t the only factor at play.

Women in Horror Month: Girls Can Kill, Too!— Bloody Disgusting

Writing female protagonists, by Lisa Morton– HWA blog

Genre-blending from Mary Shelley to the present by J. Lincoln Fenn– HWA blog

Horror Roundtable on Sexism— HWA discussion. Read the comments section– it’s very interesting!

Women Destroy Science Fiction Kickstarter— Lightspeed Magazine. In spite of everyone’s insistence that all-women issues are not desirable, this Kickstarter campaign to fund an all-women writers’ issue of Lightspeed Magazine was so successful that the people at Lightspeed expanded to include issues called Women Destroy Horror (published as an issue of Nightmare Magazine) and Women Destroy Fantasy (published as an issue of Fantasy Magazine). The campaign is over, but this shows there is clearly a demand for work by women writers. Look for the special issues later this year!

Mary SanGiovanni on her personal experiences as a woman writer of horror.

Creating female protagonists, by Lisa Morton (again, although not the same piece)– RA for All: Horror

Women in Horror Month: Pseudonyms and Author Anxiety— KC Redding-Gonzalez

Rabble Rouser Wednesdays: On the Issue of Misogynist Writers and Readers by Paula Ashe

Hugh Howey on Self-Publishing

Mark Coker responds to Hugh Howey

Tonia Brown on her personal experience with self-publishing

What’s Wrong With Female Werewolves in Popular Culture? at Darkmedia

Women in Horror Month Archives 2014— Darkmedia

Spreading the Writer’s Word— A daily spotlight on a book by a woman writer of horror

Siren’s Call Publications— download their free ezine devoted to Women in Horror Month

60 Black Women in Horror by Sumiko Saulson— free download to this guide at Smashwords.

 

There is some great stuff at those links and I hope you will take the time to explore them. I hope you had a great time learning about women in horror, and especially women in horror fiction, during the month of February. Don’t think that just because the month is up that it’s time to stop, though! Keep your eyes open for news on how Monster Librarian plans to keep women writers visible over the next several months– it will be a challenge to keep it up with the Stokers coming up and all kinds of reviews to edit, write, and share, but it’s totally worth it. So welcome to March– another month set aside to recognize women’s contributions to the world. Let’s see where it takes us!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted on March 1, 2014 by , Reply

Guest Post by Colleen Wanglund: Does Misogyny Exist in Horror?

There is nothing new about sexism and misogyny in the geek community.

Some of the things women have experienced are daily things that don’t seem like they’d be a big deal on their own, but stack up over time (I’m not going to link to it, but just search “feminist gamer bingo” and you’ll see the kinds of comments many geek women hear). Some of them are more obvious incidents, especially at cons. Cosplayers (people who wear costumes to represent a particular fictional character) in particular often face harassment, but it’s not limited to them– con attendees, authors, and panelists have all experienced disheartening behaviors due to their gender. Author Ann Aguirre wrote about her own experiences at cons not that long ago, and caused enough of a flurry to qualify for an interview at Publishers Weekly (link here). There continues to be a belief that the way things are now– both the actual treatment of geek women and girls and the representation of women in the media they consume– is okay, or at least to be expected. It’s not, and it’s important to be having a conversation about it. (Here are a couple of links that have contributed to that conversation- this article from  author John Scalzi, this article from Dr. Nerdlove, and for a slightly different and more personal take, this article by Mercedes Yardley. And, of course this awesome video from the Doubleclicks, which drives the point home with clarity).

Mostly, though, discussions on the treatment of women geeks have been focused on science fiction, fantasy, comics, and gaming communities of various kinds, horror being the redheaded stepchild of genre fiction (although there is a fair amount of overlap).  I asked Colleen Wanglund, one of our reviewers who is very involved in the horror community and in Women in Horror Month (held every February) if she would share her thoughts on misogyny and sexism in horror, and here is what she had to say.

 

 

Does Misogyny Exist in Horror?

I’m a geek—and unashamedly so.  I’m also a woman, which to some seems to be a contradiction.  So it distresses me to read about other women’s bad experiences within the realm of geekdom.  While I have been to some big conventions—namely New York ComicCon, Chiller, and Horrorfind—I personally have only had good experiences.  I’ve also been to my local comic shop on many occasions and have never gotten weird looks or been made to feel uncomfortable.  My daughter Darlene (you know her as the artist who created Horatio P. Bunny)(editor’s note: Horatio P. Bunny is the mascot for MonsterLibrarian.com) is a cosplayer—that’s costume player for the uninitiated–and has been to many more conventions than I and she has been the victim of the sexism that has taken hold.  I was shocked to hear some of what she has told me recently, and quite frankly, it disturbs me….A LOT.

This started out as a piece on the horror world, but let’s face it, there is a lot of overlap between horror, sci-fi, and fantasy.  We see it in everything from comics, movies, anime, manga and literature to video games, toys, cosplay and role playing games.  What’s got me riled up is the fact that many so called “geeks”, regardless of genre and whether they are fans, writers or other participants think that women cannot have the same interests as deeply as the men.  There are plenty of stories of convention goers angrily confronting female cosplayers, thinking they are only out for attention.  They have questioned these women to determine if they have the appropriate knowledge to be a geek.  There are stories of sexual harassment and assault, as though men think they can treat these women any way they please.  Ironically, the men who attend the various genre conventions don’t seem to mind the Booth Babes—women hired to work the booths of companies specifically to attract the male convention goers.  Women aren’t the marketing targets, although they attend, too; or maybe  the businesses there think women are not worth the effort to attract toward a particular booth or product.

What is interesting is that for every story of a woman being harassed, or accused of sleeping with a publisher to get their book in print, there is a story of women being treated with respect, and welcomed into the community of their choosing.  I have spoken to a number of female horror authors who have said their experiences have been nothing but good when it comes to dealing with other male writers, editors, or publishers, both through long-distance business dealings and in person at conventions and other events.  Some have even told me that if anything, the only bad experiences they may have had have come from other women.

Even looking at movies, women are forever portrayed as the damsel in distress having to be saved from the likes of Jason Vorhees, Michael Myers, Leatherface and Freddy Krueger.  But not so fast.  There is also the phenomenon of the Final Girl, the girl left standing in the aftermath of a crazed psychopath on a killing spree.  The Final Girl is no helpless female. On the contrary, she has survived and (usually) been responsible for the demise of the psycho.  And of course there have been plenty of badass heroines, including Ripley (Alien), Sarah Connor (Terminator), Alice (Resident Evil), Laurie Strode (Halloween), Heather (I Spit on Your Grave), Kristy (Hellraiser), and most recently Katniss (The Hunger Games), among many, many others.

So does misogyny exist in horror?  Or sci-fi and fantasy, for that matter?  I think it depends on who you talk to and how their own experiences frame their opinion.  Is it outright hatred of women?  I can’t say for sure. For some, I think it’s just arrogance to think women can’t participate in geekdom.  For others, I think it’s fear—fear of losing what these male geeks and writers have thought of as their domain.  One thing I do know is that it seems to mirror society, in general.  Women are always getting the short end of the stick, no matter how successful they become.  We see it with women who work behind the scenes in the horror film industry, with the male to female ratio of published stories in horror, the number of publishing houses run by men versus women, and in the ratio of awards given out to women in all aspects of the horror industry. While on the one hand it’s a good thing to see horror film festivals and book publishers focusing on the women in the industry, I also think it’s sad that these steps must be taken to give hard working women the recognition they deserve.

Either way, women have to work harder than most men to be successful in horror, sci-fi, fantasy, or whatever it is they are pursuing.  This is the reason behind the annual Women in Horror Recognition Month.  Taking place every February, the brainchild of Hannah Neurotica aims to bring to light all of the women in the horror film industry, both in front of the camera and behind it.  My personal involvement came about because I wanted to ensure that women in the horror literary industry also received their due.  There is support for women, both from other women as well as men.  Not all men are clueless.  Most of the men I have dealt with as a reviewer and writer have been nothing but supportive and respectful.  However, not everyone is so inclined to give their fellow writers, directors, gamers or fans the respect they deserve….and this is not going to change overnight.  But I believe it is changing.  The Viscera Film Festival and Bleedfest showcase female moviemakers.  In the literary world, an annual award given for “outstanding achievement in the literature of psychological suspense, horror and the dark fantastic” is named for Shirley Jackson, female author of such notable works as the short story “The Lottery” and the novel The Haunting of Hill House. 

Have I answered the question “Does misogyny exist in horror?”  I think there is some measure of misogyny and sexism but I don’t think it is as bad as some may think.  Again, this is dependent upon the individual’s own experiences.  It’s the remnants of a patriarchal society that is still struggling with women’s equality.

 

Colleen Wanglund

 

 

 

 

Posted on August 11, 2013 by , Reply
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