The horror of it all 2

Pink Think: “Where there is no imagination, there is no horror.” – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

I love reading horror fiction, especially stories that start off really creepy. I mean, it seems like a given, but I recently read a short story collection where based on the first sentence, I decided whether or not to read on. I found that the ones that really caught my attention started off with a creepy atmosphere. And the ones I skipped for later started with a sentence that doesn’t refer to ghosts or ghouls and things that go bump in the night.

For a long time, I could not get enough of Stephen King. My earliest favorites were “Pet Sematary,” “Christine,” and “Salem’s Lot.” And then I began to feel horrible, dark, and depressed while reading them, or, as a friend put it, I couldn’t pick up the scriptures afterwards. I felt that way reading King’s “Misery,” and decided to shut the book after the first couple of chapters. The foul language and the violence made me feel sick. Which was too bad since the novel, where the main character is a writer, is supposedly authobiographical and could probably have been instructive.

As I write horror fiction, I hope it will have all the elements I enjoy in a book, but won’t make me feel as though I would have to hire an exorcist afterwards.

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