I’m Back and Why I Don’t Write Horror

Yes, after a month getting things reorganized, revamping my website and finally finishing the first revision of Wings of the Butterfly, I have returned.

Since it is almost October I figured I would make my posts this month Halloween related. In case you couldn’t tell by the title, the first one is pretty straightforward.

I have a caveat with my fiction. It has to have a happy ending. Now don’t get me wrong; this does not mean happy like a Care Bears Special. I will put my characters through the ringer, and terrible and irreversible things will happen to them and to the world they know and love. But my stories, bar none, will always end on a hopeful note. Something will have been achieved. Something will have changed for the good. The characters left at the end will still be able to stand and say “Yeah, it was a hard fight, but we’re glad we survived it.”

So I shy away from writing horror because I feel in order for a story to qualify as horror, the ending has to be a hard downer. Most horror stories I’ve read end with the character either dead or utterly screwed. I hate that. It leaves me feeling sick to my stomach, and I walk away from the story feeling worse for having read it.

Now I don’t want this to become a semantics argument, so I’ll acknowledge that there are some horrific stories that according to my description, do end happily. I personally consider those to be dark fantasy, magical realism or realism, depending on what happens in the story. I understand that others consider those horror fiction.

I will never write the other kind of horror fiction, because it isn’t in me. I need to write an ending with some hope to it, otherwise, the story, to me, either has no meaning, or argues for a meaning that I can’t abide. That life sucks, and you can only be thankful that utterly horrific things aren’t happening to you right now.

I want my fiction to mean hope, and love. I will put my characters through the ringer, and they may not all survive, but those that do will be happy they survived.

Next post, the age old, or maybe not so old question: why are zombies so popular?

Cheers until next time