I didn’t know I was a horror writer until somebody told me. When my publishing company informed my agent they wouldn’t accept my book, THE UNWELCOME CHILD, unless it could be marketed as horror, I was (excuse the play on words) horrified. You see, I wanted my book to be taken seriously, as in reviewed by the New York Times Book Review. Sure, the book had a supernatural element to it, but that was merely a device to illustrate the more serious themes at the heart of the story, namely the controversy over pro-choice/life, women’s issues, etc. At least, that’s the spin I put on it so that the project would fly with my MFA thesis advisor. When I first told her I wanted to write a book about a woman who becomes a surrogate for a long-dead girl, it was hard not to notice the barely disguised disdain on her face. After asking what was the problem, she confessed her concern that once a ghost shows up in a book, no one takes it seriously. Looking back, I think what she was really concerned about was that the kind of novel I wanted to write cheapened the whole premise of an MFA program, where supposedly only the ‘finest’ kind of writing should be focused on. Being new to the writing world, little did I know that the horror genre is to Literary Fiction what a trailer park is to Park Avenue. After all, when was the last time Stephen King was short-listed for the Pulitzer?
However, if I look back on my earliest writing attempts, it’s evident that I was always a bit of a Bluebeard. I wrote my first short story when I was nine or so, about a torture chamber underneath an abandoned church. One of my favorite pastimes during the cold Michigan winters where I grew up was to sit in my garage with a bunch of friends and tell ghost stories. Edgar Allen Poe was one of the first authors I fell in love with (I adored those Vincent Price movies!) And Halloween has always been my favorite holiday. Although I didn’t become a writer until much later in my life, my dancing career reflected this love of the dark side. I used to dance in a nightclub called the Cat Club. It had opened not long after Flash Dance, and every Friday or Saturday night I could be found either committing Hari Kari, thrashing around in a straight jacket, or portraying a prom queen with a machine gun under her dress. And when I did start seriously writing at the age of thirty-three? My first short story collection was titled TEN WAYS TO KILL YOUR MOTHER. Sometimes, I still look at the rejection letters for the collection, peppered with words such as ‘too dark, ‘disturbing.’ One editor even asked about my mental health.
So, after reflecting on all of the above, I agreed to have my book marketed as horror. So what if THE UNWELCOME CHILD will never be welcome in the New York Times? At least it will be read by people who think like me.
Terese Pampellonne
9 Comments, Comment or Ping
Brian
Great story
Looking forward to The Unwelcome Child.
Brian
Jun 25th, 2005
Tim
Terese, interesting essay … you write what you need to write, that’s how I’ve always approached it, and the fact that your novel is being published as ‘horror’ doesn’t by any means mean that it won’t be taken seriously. The NY Times Book Review has covered horror novels before (mine included), so fear not:-)
Jun 25th, 2005
David Niall Wilson
It’s interesting to note that academic programs always look upon such fiction with disdain, while the rest of the world looks on them as entertainment. If you can pull off both, an entertaining, popular book with deeper themes and issues imbedded in the pages…THAT is something to be proud of…
DNW
Jun 25th, 2005
Bob Fleck
I’m sure your MFA advisor also feels that Shakespeare, Dickens, and Twain shouldn’t be taken seriously.
Never write for small minds. Write the stories you need to write and the truth in the words will prove your point.
Jun 25th, 2005
Janet Berliner
I echo what the others said. The hell with the snobs and the camels they rode in on.
Janet
Jun 25th, 2005
--TSJ
As a romance novelist, that probably puts me in the next trailer park over from you, Terese. I’ve been reading a few of the blog entries here and it sounds like romance and horror writers are fighting a lot of the same battles. Just wait until you start getting fan mail and royalty checks. That’ll take some of the sting out of the genre snobs’ bite.
I think your book sounds great, and I will be watching for it come December.
Good luck!
–Tina St. John
Jun 25th, 2005
terry
Labels. I don’t much care for labels.
I was always comfortable living my life at a pace slower than most of my contemporaries. Working part time fit my internal pacing quite well thank you very much. Contemporary life, unfortunately, has little patience with those who function better in the slow lane. So I ramped up for a while, to the full time work-a-day world; then I caved in. Totally. Now they tell me the ‘problem’ was that I was clinically depressed for many years. Suddenly I can’t see my self as a happy person in my past; it’s all tainted by the label they have assigned to me because I don’t function very well by trying to follow to the rules of the majority.
The sense of failure is enormous. The fear of putting myself out there as a ‘damaged’ person is mind numbing. I haven’t worked in 6 years.
If I’d been allowed to be me, to find my way through the world at the pace that worked for me, I’d likely still be working.
Therese, don’t allow the label assigned to you by the ‘outside’ world to reshape you in its image. Write for you. Let them call it horror if they must. But keep a place alive inside you that never forgets you are far more than the labels others so thoughtlessly assign to people to make them better fit their world view.
I look forward to reading your book.
Terry
Jun 25th, 2005
Justine
I’m wondering if the disdain your MFA advisor expressed wasn’t aimed at horror in particular so much as popular fiction in general. I’m thinking of Dennis Lehane — how he started out writing experimental literary short stories for his own MFA — before writing and selling a genre novel (no doubt to the horror of his own advisor). The genre might have been different (and possibly more respected) but he talks about how very aware he was of ‘crossing a line’, as if he was goose-stepping to the dark side. (Happy note: he also talks about how very very very glad he is that he chose to do this).
It seems that you must — must! — be on one side or other of the high art/low art abyss. And it strikes me that that abyss is in many ways a marketing ploy — god forbid a sales/marketing/bookstore person not know exactly where on the shelves to put you — yet is constantly swallowed as some deep eternal truth by readers and writers alike (because for every lit type who scorns anything that smacks of entertainment, there’s a genre type generalizing unfairly right back).
I think about this a lot because I also didn’t know I was a horror writer until somebody told me; and I certainly didn’t know I had sold out in any way shape or form until an artist friend kindly enlightened me.
And I can’t help wondering that if creatives weren’t forced into either the ‘entertaining’ pen or the ’serious and challenging’ pen, that if there was a big warm space in between to play and find inspiration, maybe people would find cause to complain a little less that a) popular fiction is vacuous clumsily written garbage and b) literary fiction is dull dull dull.
Jun 26th, 2005
jeff resnick
GREAT POST!!! Perfectly said. I always find it odd when my friends ask me why I love reading horror and watching horror movies. And if I’m especially bold and tell them I’m working on my first horror novel…watch out! I just don’t get the reactions. But who cares. I continue to read and write what I love…and that’s the way it has to be!
Jun 30th, 2005
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