Horror Wizards
I sometimes worry if my work is horrifying enough to count as horror.
I write in many genres, but deep down inside I think of myself as a horror writer. But I also don’t really believe that horror is a genre—at least not all the time.
Sure, there are tropes and subgenres. There’s a whole set of expectations that people have when you tell them a bit of fiction lies in the horror genre. Slashers or ghost houses or devil cults or swamp monsters. But I think horror is more than that.
Horror and comedy lie orthogonally to genre. They are dials that you can turn up or down on any kind of story.
Alien is one of my favourite movies—not just because it’s a perfectly crafted horror movie, but because it’s also a perfectly crafted science fiction movie. Serial killer stories like Silence of the Lambs are very often police procedurals. Supernatural horror stories about magic and demons are a kind of fantasy fiction. If it’s got witches and wizards in it we might call it ‘occult’, but… you see my point. Wizards is wizards.
You can dial up the horror in any genre without it diluting that genre.
I came to horror later than most. I started out reading science fiction and fantasy and it wasn’t until I was 16 or 17 that a friend of mine gave me a copy of Stephen King’s post apocalyptic horror masterpiece, The Stand, that I really became a horror reader. This was right before I discovered comics, too—also, later than most. Specifically, I discovered DC’s nascent Vertigo comics line. Most of those books were situated right in the horror/urban fantasy sweet spot that was exactly what I wanted at the time. Later I became interested in crime fiction, particularly noir. I still read across all of these genres, as well as ‘literary’ fiction. But let’s get back to horror.
Horror is about intent, not genre. Is the story intended scare you, frighten you, terrify you, or disturb you? Writing with that intent is what drew me to horror in the first place. Horror frees you from the expectation of a happy ending. It raises the stakes when we know all the characters are unsafe. In some cases, the reader’s world view is also unsafe. The best horror challenges us. It challenges our assumptions about our stories, about our society, and about ourselves. It shows us how to understand, if not empathize with, the monsters and the villains. Those are the characters I like to write about.
So here’s my confession: I am a horror writer, but I love all those other genres just as much as horror-the-genre. I like to smash them together and tweak the dials and out comes a story or a book or a comic. There’s no question in my mind that I am still a horror writer. The question I keeping asking myself is if I am enough of a horror enough that other people see me that way. Let’s do a quick survey of my work and see if I can show you the problem.
Faerie Apocalypse: horror version of a portal fantasy, just as Blood Meridian is a horror western. Both horror, although it’s hard to demonstrate that on the blurb of either book.
Bloody Waters is an easy one to categorize. Rockstars, a deal with the devil—that makes it occult, right? That’s horror.
Shadowmancy: a sociopath attends a magic school. If you say Horror Potter in my hearing I’m going to have to have you murdered, but okay, I get it. Again, the blurb makes it sound like the contemporary fantasy novel that it is, but it’s definitely horror.
The Sixsmiths has devil worshippers. Horror, right? It even says it on the book! But no. The Sixsmiths isn’t intended to disturb you. It’s a black comedy that, in my opinion, doesn’t go all the way to horror.
X-Dimensional Assassin Zai Through the Unfolded Earth: a killer travels to different SF and Fantasy worlds to ply his trade. But it’s really crime fiction. Or travel fiction. But the intent is… not horror. Oh shit, you got me.
Ok, here’s confession number 2: I chose to think of myself as a horror writer, but my instincts often run to satire. The Sixsmiths is pure satire, girded with horror tropes. I’m not sure Bloody Waters as horror, either, despite having been nominated for a Best Horror Novel award.
Bloody Waters has monsters and occult powers and the Devil, but it’s not really trying to disturb you. The comedy knob is turned up just as high as the horror knob and maybe it’s really a satire? I don’t even know anymore. My American publisher has classified it as Urban Fantasy /Paranormal and I can’t fault them for it.
Let me come back to Shadowmancy, since it’s just out today. I know it’s hard to connect ‘horror novel’ to ‘magic school’ but, of all my long fiction, this one probably hews closest to my definition of horror than any of my other books. The narrator, Quay, is a sociopath and the book looks at his alienation in the tradition of Taxi Driver (a horror movie: Y/N?). Shadowmancy looks at legacies of abuse and the way that educational institutions can reinforce them instead of helping students to escape. There is no satire here. Quay does not have the capacity for humour and the only joke in the book is, I think, more sad and desperate than funny.
Here’s a reading one of Quay’s monologues, to give you a brief taste:
This is a serious horror novel, as best I can write one. It’s also a serious look at art, education, and… well, I guess I have to say ‘the occult’ now, don’t I? But we all know I mean wizards.
I hope you psychos like it.
Shadowmancy is out today, direct from Outland Entertainment, or from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or any of the usual places. You can also ask your bookstore or library to order one. Doesn’t it look handsome?
Cheers to everyone who’s given the book a read. Cheers to Stephen Ormsby, Anthony Earl, and Scott Colby, my various editors on this work. Cheers to Nic Hunter and Shannon Potratz for the art. Cheers to Outland for picking up the book. And cheers to you, my readers, for your ongoing support.
Franksly yours,
— Jason