Wicked: Women in Horror Writing

While developing the idea for this post, I decided to do a few experiments. They were simple, really: I Googled “Women in Horror”, then “Women in horror writing”. I texted people with the request: “Name all the women horror writers you can think of. Go," and I looked at the best sellers under “Horror” for the Amazon Kindle and Barnes and Noble Nook.

With the first Google search the results I got weren't as bad I was expecting, but they still leave something to strive for: Google gave me links to Women of Horror Month (cool!), and then lists:

One by Maxim, of course. The sexiest women in horror (no, I'm not linking it), including lovely lines such as: “Whenever P.J. appeared in a movie, you could be sure of two things: Gratuitous breastage and a quick, unsavory death.” This, really, encapsulated the primary issue with women in horror movies (which often place women in one of three roles: “hot virgin girl who lives,” “hot promiscuous girl who dies naked,” and “mother who most protect her child and is also probably hot, unless she's the villain”), but it wasn't really the story I was looking for.

"We are all books of blood..."

Every day is Halloween for me.

I don't mean that in a '90s Goth, pale makeup and platform boots way (although back in 2005 I did). I also don't mean it in a human bones in my apartment way (because all my apartment really says is "my boyfriend likes sports" and "I have a cat"). Mostly I mean it in a reading horror stories and watching horror movies to fall asleep every day and night way.

And, really, I read a lot of horror. I watch a lot of horror. I read and watch a lot of things that wouldn't normally be considered horror but are so bad-- well, that's another story.

And lately I've been reading Clive Barker's "Books of Blood", a terrifying tryst of short stories and one amazing introduction in the full collection that really makes you think about how the publishing industry has changed.

In 1984 the first collection of "Books of Blood" was published. At the time, Barker was a relative unknown -- a sometimes-movie-guy who wrote fun, gory, and occasionally brilliant short stories that were there to scare you. It's something that you never see now. Not because of the lack of horror writers, or lack of short stories, or lack of new authors, but because of a lack of willingness for a publisher to release an entire collection of one new author, however great he or she is.

It's something that makes me incredibly sad, because short stories are such a cornerstone of horror. They're something almost everyone has grown up with, even if not in written form. Horror stories are the campfire, late-night-sleepover tales. They're the things you dare each other to do in after-school programs and school yards. "My friend went to the mirror and said 'Candyman' three times and woke up covered in bruises and had candy in her bed." Bloody Mary and monsters in the closet. Maybe they weren't the world's most brilliant stories, but they were there.

Now they seem impossibly hard to track down. Yes, there are the occasional anthologies stuffed in bookshelves, the new collections by Stephen King or a couple other authors everyone has already heard of, but to find a good tale to terrify, told in a new voice (that doesn't involve vampire romance in the YA section), it's all but impossible to find, because there is an unwillingness to take risks, to release good, scary fiction by someone who no one knows.

I suppose in some ways this is where self-publishing comes in, but that's not a track I am familiar in.

Mostly, I just think: It's the season for horror, but after I put down my Clive Barker books, my Lovecrafts and Kings, what am I left with? And why, when there are so many aspiring horror writers, I can never seem to find any in print?

These are things I want to know.