Ginger Nuts of Horror: Horror of Humanity feature: Why Horror by Miranda Kate Boers
A couple of years ago, in 2020, I wrote a feature article for Ginger Nuts of Horror, a horror review and discussion website, and for some strange reason I didn't share it on my blog. And now, as the hosting site for Ginger Nuts had problems, they had to move their website, and my article is no longer readily available - at this point I haven't been able to find it in the archives. So I decided to republish the article here on my blog.
It was part of a feature they were running about horror and mental health, and as I have now published my first self-help book, I am often asked how a horror writer and this article covers that.
What drew me to horror, first as areader and then as a writer.
I still remember being out on thesports fields at school and classmates surreptitiously passing around a wornpaperback urging me to look at a certain page number. To this day I stillremember the line: ‘putting his member into her like stuffing dough into apurse’ – or something along those lines. It’s from The Dark by James Herbert ifI remember correctly, and there was something repugnant yet compelling about itthat made me want to read more, so I did, I read lots more – especially ofHerbert’s books. And not just for dark, crudely described sex scenes, but forthe dark sinister feel and the brutality of the horror – a brutality which hadoverlapped into my life since I was born, being a child of domestic violenceand having been on the receiving end both verbally and physically as a teenager.
I moved on from James Herbert,lapping up the likes of Guy N Smith and his books Deathbell and Satan’sSnowdrop, and then I discovered Stephen King – Firestarter being my first. Ibecame one of his Constant Readers. And then Clive Barker came to my attention,and he encapsulated both horror and a surreal fantasy that was so extreme itwas difficult to explain to people who have never read his work. I could onlydescribe it as being so far beyond fantasy it was ‘the fantastic’; his use of crude,harsh, blunt words giving it a harder edge than a lot of books in the samegenre, placing it in darker realms. But I loved it and consumed as much of itas I could find, and for me personally it was the ultimate in escapism, feedingthe fantasies I used to disassociate from my real world.
I also reached a point that I was soused to reading this type of horror that it was hard for me to gauge how darkit was: I remember recommending Weaveworld to a friend, only thinking about thefantasy side, and they struggled with it. I did the same with Fear Nothing byDean Koontz, when suggesting it to my book club.
It’s led me to ponder many times whyI was so unaffected by it where others weren’t, and I knew it was reflective ofmy childhood. I had witnessed and experienced such real, tangible horrors that fictionaltales like these didn’t affect me negatively, in fact they helped me escape andsee that it was possible that things could be worse. I could relate to the fearand the suspense of uncertainty in a much more visceral way, whereas happy-go-luckychick-lit or romance novels, where people’s struggles were minor in comparison,just didn’t cut it for me.
Despite their darkness, many horrorbooks have a baseline of good triumphs over evil – and I needed to know that, Ineeded to believe it could get better and that there were people out there thatgot away or recovered.
The fallout of experiencing the kindof abuse and trauma I did as a child is that it has repercussions as you growup and try and hold down relationships and jobs. I suffer from Complex PTSD,which shows up in lots of forms from anxiety and depression to suicidalideation, and is caused by prolonged and repetitive abuse over many years. Italso means I would disconnect from life around me and live in a fantasy in mymind, a form of dissociative behaviour that has caused me to struggle a lot,and which is what led to me moving from reading to writing my own horror.
I started with flash fiction, whichenabled me to express emotions – emotions that I hadn’t been allowed as a child– through characters and situations. I could express their hurt and I couldexpress their anger, I could explore what was going on. It was a release, andin sharing them I was also able to open a dialogue about them – a much neededdialogue.
The opening to my debut novel in September2019 was written in 1991 as a mere snippet for a competition to win a copy ofJames Herbert’s Portent, but I knew then I wanted it to be bigger, that Iwanted to express to the world what would drive a woman to murder, how that waspossible, how a person’s mind can be broken. But I wasn’t ready at that time towrite it and I knew that. I needed to unravel myself and gain some lifeexperience, and after years in therapy I was able to finally write about thatcharacter’s break from reality and her recovery – all be it in prison. I wantedthe audience to feel sympathy for her, to understand her, and realise that lifeis not black and white, it’s a whole world of grey and that mental health is afragile thing and if people aren’t paying attention things can go array.
As a reader I want to be able torelate, to engage to connect in a way I struggle to in real life, and for methat connection has to be with characters and storylines that aren’t straightforward or ‘normal’, that are off kilter and warped in some way, because thatis how I feel in myself. They add depth and give me a sense of belonging, andas someone who has suffered a whole half century on this planet without one thatis paramount. I might go and visit other genres to read and write, but horrorwill always be my true home.
