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RA For All: Horror: 31 Days of Horror Project

MonsterLibrarian.com was pleased to be included in Becky Siegel Spratford’s project 31 Days of Horror over at her blog RA for All: Horror. Becky is the expert in reader’s advisory in the horror genre, so if you haven’t heard of her and are looking for a great resource go check her blog out!

The post went up a couple of days ago. Click here to go directly to our guest post there. I hope you’ll also take some time to see who else is featured over there this month– so far, it’s been interesting! Or, if you would rather just keep reading, I’ll include what I wrote below, although none of the links that I included there are active. But you really should go check RA for All: Horror out.

 

TRENDS IN THE HORROR GENRE
By Kirsten Kowalewski

Many of the trends in horror fiction right now reflect trends in publishing and reading in general. Anyone who follows books at all, or has been to the bookstore recently, will note an overwhelming number of YA titles devoted to the supernatural, as well as dystopian and post-apocalyptic fiction. So results of a recent study by Bowker Market Research, that show that 55% of YA books (targeted at ages 12-17) are purchased by adults reflect a notable trend not just in general but for the horror genre. The trend towards adults reading YA books is now so strong that popular writers of adult horror, such as Jonathan Maberry are now writing YA titles, and publishers of adult horror are now starting YA imprints–ChiZine Publications recently announced that it will introduce a new imprint, ChiTeen, in 2014.

Something to remember as you consider these numbers is that teens also read a lot of adult fiction. In her book Shelf Discovery, Lizzie Skurnick touches on this, as she recalls reading adult books like Jaws and raiding her parents’ bookshelves , in addition to reading contemporary YA fiction (and as Becky noted in this blog post, as teens are new to the genre, introducing them to these more mature titles is a great way to circulate your backlist). Many, many people start reading Stephen King and other adult horror novels as teens. What young adults read isn’t necessarily fiction targeted at young adults, any more than what adults read is targeted to them.

At MonsterLibrarian.com, we’ve reviewed books with monsters in them that fall all along the spectrum, and the most popular searches for book lists are for YA vampire books and paranormal romances. These are so popular that we started a blog, Reading Bites, just for this audience. However, there seems to be agreement between horror readers and librarians that the vampire novel, for the most part, has lost its bite; as one middle school librarian noted to me recently, middle school girls aren’t scared by a vampire who will take them to the prom. As vampires bleed into the genres of romance and mystery, hardcore horror readers, who prefer their monsters to be monstrous, have started to turn away from this subgenre. Make sure you know what a reader wants when he or she asks for a vampire book.

The trend in YA fiction towards dystopian and post-apocalyptic fiction, influenced by The Hunger Games, also seems to frequently take on a romantic angle, and often portrays the main characters as catalysts for societal change. Post-apocalyptic fiction seems to be mainly reflected in adult horror in the subgenre of zombie fiction, where the focus is usually on the survivors of a post-apocalyptic event doing their best to survive a zombie invasion. Lovers of this subgenre are sometimes content to read the same kind of story over and over—they like the fast-paced action and gore and aren’t necessarily interested in character development—but in recent years there have been some fresh takes on a genre that, while popular, was starting to get a bit stale (you can see what I mean by checking out our list of zombie titles). Mad science is also taking off in interesting directions, with plague viruses, technology gone mad, genetic manipulation, and man-made monsters showing up with frequency in both YA and adult fiction. One of the scariest books I’ve read in the past twelve months was Kenneth Oppell’s This Dark Endeavor (reviewed here), a prequel to Mary Shelley’s classic horror story Frankenstein. Both Oppell’s short novel and Shelley’s original appeared together in the same ebook. Now that’s a hook! The Frankenstein story takes a totally different turn in Neal Shusterman’s UnWholly, due out later this month. And these days many zombie books start with some kind of virus or plague, with the search for a cure a significant storyline.

Another trend in publishing and reading that is affecting horror fiction is the popularity of ebooks and self-publishing. At the time that we started MonsterLibrarian.com, horror fiction had more or less lost its home in mainstream publishing and migrated to small presses that often specialized in printing collector’s editions—beautiful, but expensive, and not easily available to the average consumer. Some of them, like Cemetery Dance and Bad Moon Books have done very well, but many times books from small presses are only available by direct order, which makes them hard to find.

As ebooks and self-publishing have exploded, horror fiction of all kinds has become much more readily available. Short pieces that weren’t exactly what a publisher was looking for, or were by unknown authors, could be (and are) presented in ebook format, and find an audience. This is great for horror readers who are loyal to a subgenre that isn’t being promoted in mainstream publishing , like werewolf fiction. There is a strong minority of readers who love werewolf horror (enough that we hosted a Werewolf Month for several years), but there are few current werewolf horror books (here’s our list of werewolf titles). A search for “werewolf horror” on Amazon.com brings up over 1,000 titles, mostly self-published ebooks. It’s hard to know what the quality of a self-published book will be before you read it, but many ebooks are very low-priced. Some authors are now publishing serials, with an attempt to hook an audience with episodes of a continuing story. Authors whose rights have reverted to them can introduce their books to a new audience. Small presses sell books in ebook format as well as collector’s editions, making those available to a wider audience. And current mainstream authors (like Stephen King) are finding a demand for shorter pieces . The ways that ebooks are changing publishing in general and horror in particular are many, and it’s very exciting. Unfortunately for libraries and their readers, most of these won’t be easily available through a service like Overdrive. The conundrum of how libraries can help horror readers connect more easily with ebooks doesn’t seem like one that can be solved easily.

A final trend that I see affecting the way people experience horror fiction is the way it is sweeping the media. Television shows like The Walking Dead (originally based on a series of graphic novels) have made zombies more mainstream. Movies such as Joss Whedon’s Cabin in the Woods draw in reluctant viewers (see what blogger Barbara Vey wrote here). Apps allow you to take the experience along with you. The brand-new book Horrible Hauntings by Shirin Yim Bridges uses augmented reality technology to extend the reading experience; ghosts leap out at the reader when you point your cell phone camera at the pictures! Horror is such a visual genre that the way other media are giving readers to experience it is nothing short of amazing.

Getting the horror reader in the door can be a challenge. But the real challenge is this: with so much horror outside mainstream publishing, once you get the reader in the door, how are you going to manage to give them what they’re looking for?

Posted on October 7, 2012 by , Reply

Banned Books Week: Rage by Stephen King

In doing a little research on Stephen King for Banned Books Week (many of his books have been challenged or banned) I learned something I didn’t know about. I always thought that his first book was Carrie, but Carrie was actually his first published book. I knew King had also previously written under the name Richard Bachman, and I’ve actually read two of them, Thinner and The Running Man (and find both terrifying). But, since I don’t keep up on these things I didn’t know that the first four Bachman novels had been published together. One of the stories included in that omnibus is King’s first novel, Rage, which tells the story of a high school shooter who takes his Algebra II class hostage, and the events that unroll within the classroom walls as everyone reveals their secrets. Rage was published in 1977, and republished with the other Bachman novels in 1985.  According to James Smythe, a writer for the Guardian who is rereading all of King’s work in chronological order (click here to see his commentary on Rage), King actually began writing this book in 1966, when he was still himself in high school. Today it seems unnervingly prescient, and in fact school shootings in 1989, 1996, and 1997  were apparently influenced by the book. After a fourth incident, when a 14 year old boy named Michael Carneal shot eight students at his high school, killing three, and also turned out to have Rage in his possession, King requested that the publisher let the book go out of print. It’s the only one of King’s books to have gone out of print. In a keynote he gave to the Vermont Library Association, he said (and this is a paraphrase):

 

Do I think that Rage may have provoked Carneal, or any other badly adjusted young person, to resort to the gun?

… There are factors in the Carneal case which make it doubtful that Rage was the defining factor, but I fully recognize that it is in my own self-interest to feel just that way; that I am prejudiced in my own behalf. I also recognize the fact that a novel such as Rage may act as an accelerant on a troubled mind… That such stories, video games… or photographic scenarios will exist no matter what–that they will be obtainable under the counter if not over it–begs the question. The point is that I don’t want to be a part of it. Once I knew what had happened, I pulled the ejection-seat lever on that particular piece of work. I withdrew Rage, and I did it with relief rather than regret.

Rage is not a banned book. If you wanted to, you could, I suppose, seek it out. But, even though King has written another novel about a murderous high school student, Carrie, Carrie doesn’t seem to inspire the uncomfortable feeling Rage did, for him to allow it to go out of print. He continues to write stories and books that inspire terror and horror, or at least unease, and has written other books that have been challenged or banned, something he strongly believes should always be protested.

So perhaps it comes down to this question: What is the responsibility of the author to his or her readers, and to society? The ideas and words contained in a book can be very powerful and it’s always possible that they will lead to destructive (or incredibly inspiring) acts. There’s always someone at the tipping point. That doesn’t mean the person will necessarily fall or that the work should be silenced. Earshot, the episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer that contained a school shooting and was scheduled to be shown shortly after the Columbine shooting, was pushed back further into that season, but it hasn’t faded into obscurity. In the same keynote address, King noted:

If, on the other hand, you were to ask me if the presence of potentially unstable or homicidal persons makes it immoral to write a novel or make a movie in which violence plays a part, I would say absolutely not. In most cases, I have no patience with such reasoning. I reject it as both bad thinking and bad morals. Like it or not, violence is a part of life and a unique part of American life. If accused of being part of the problem, my response is the time-honored reporter’s answer: “Hey, many, I don’t make the news, I just report it.”

Perhaps it just makes King uncomfortable that the sale of Rage might have been a motivating factor in more than one of the cases I mentioned above. I know I would feel that way. He wasn’t forced into his decision– letting Rage go out of print was a personal decision and a request he made of his publisher. It does beg the question though–  where do we draw the line, as readers and writers? It’s something each of us must do on our own. King drew his. Where would you draw yours?

 

 

Posted on October 3, 2012 by , 2 comments

What Banned Books Week Really Means

It’s kind of interesting to look at the opinions, or lack thereof, of the authors of banned books on censorship. R.L Stine, author of the Goosebumps series and many, many other books both scary and funny, doesn’t seem to have much to say. The Goosebumps series was #15 on the list 100 Most Banned/Challenged Books,1990-1999, and was still in the top 100 for the list for 2000-2009, and just last year was challenged in Kirbyville, Texas. But in interviews, he’s rarely asked about censorship of his books, and the most I could find was a comment from him from a chat on CNN that attempting to ban the Harry Potter books was “silly”. Maybe when you’ve written as many books as he has, one person, or school, or library, taking one book from a series with 100+ titles seems pretty insignificant (I’d love to really know what he thinks).

Stephen King, whose book Cujo has been challenged and banned in the past, has made it clear that he opposes book banning, but he’s also said that he doesn’t see it as a major issue. A writer writes, and if he’s defending his books, then he’s not writing. I get that, but he also says he believes a defense should be mounted– but by whom? In a speech he gave titled ” I Want To Be Typhoid Stevie” in 1997 he said that when his books are challenged or banned, he tells kids this:

Don’t get mad, get even… Run, don’t walk, to the nearest nonschool library or to the local bookstore and get whatever it was that they banned. Read whatever they’re trying to keep out of your eyes and your brain, because that’s exactly what you need to know.

His philosophy hasn’t really changed too much. I don’t totally agree with him– I think it’s important for kids to stand up for their right to read, and while you certainly can find at least some of his books there (he’s written so many), not everyone has easy access to a library or bookstore where they can easily acquire a challenged or banned book, or owns an ereader (you can now buy his books online, and some of them are only available as ebooks). Maybe if you tear the house apart you’ll find that your dad has a secret stash (which is how I first tripped over King’s books). Or maybe not. If he doesn’t protest challenges to his books, and kids don’t, who in a divided community will provide that defense? A school librarian may be an amazing advocate who carries the day… but it scares me just to think about doing it myself.

But, he points out, and I think this is a point well taken, in the United States, we all have the right to protest a challenge to a book, or a book banning, to give copies of a banned book away openly (as the Kurt Vonnegut Library did in a recent controversy over Slaughterhouse-Five), or to acquire a banned book without persecution. There are parts of the world where that isn’t possible, and times in history when it has been vigorously enforced. Even though we aren’t living in one of those places, or through one of those times, and even though banning books is a serious issue here, he notes in a 1992 essay:

There are places in the world where the powers that be ban the author as well as the author’s works when the subject matter or mode of expression displeases said powers. Look at Salman Rushdie, now living under a death sentence, or Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who spent eight years in a prison camp for calling Josef Stalin “the boss” and had to run for the west to avoid another stay after he won the Nobel Prize for “The Gulag Archipelago.”

I discovered that Banned Books Week inspires defenders of human rights, who fight for freedom of speech and freedom of expression for writers and journalists who are witnesses to oppression and who live in or write about these places. In America, our right to stand up for the freedom to read resonates throughout the world. In the world of school librarianship, connectedness, collaboration, and social justice are essential concepts to share. Something for all of us to think about is the way Banned Books Week affects not just individual challenges here, but human rights around the world, and the courage to fight for freedom of expression in the face of danger. If you visit our Pinterest board on Banned Books, I shared links there to some organizations that contribute to continuing that fight, and I hope that you’ll check them out. And many thanks to Mr. King to providing quite a bit of food for thought.

 

Posted on September 30, 2012 by , Reply
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