Horror Networking

Hi Wolfgang.

This is your network. There's lots of folks here that have published work successfully and others trying to hit the mark. Also, there's a forum called 'Share Your Work" where you can post a story for review and crits. They'll serve you well in your quest.

BTW - Laymon would probably go ballistic if he were ever refered to as mainstream.

Pike

greetings Wolfgang

a warm welcome--i am into short stories. not paid for horror yet--unless you count the people who pay me not to sing--but thats another story.
dl hegel

WolfgangNibori said:

Hi, Horror people. (yes, the H is always capitalized)

I'm a writing striving towards horror but I tend to end up, well... I'm not sure I'm bleak enough?

I was just wanting to meet other folks out there who've gotten published or are struggling to. If you got published, what'd you sell? I ask because I'm curious if Richard Laymon's become mainstream now or if the editors are against stories more sordid than your typical haunted house tale.

Lemme know?

(For the record I have one short story that I'm positive is horror, one fairly certain novella, two pretty sure novels and two pretty positive short stories... lol)

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Laymon... Taboo? Well, they did make a movie based on one of his books so I guess he isn't so "taboo". Which book? The Girl Next Door. Haven't read or seen it but it looks to be a typical teen/ romance kind of thing.

Pike

Pike said:

Laymon... Taboo? Well, they did make a movie based on one of his books so I guess he isn't so "taboo". Which book? The Girl Next Door. Haven't read or seen it but it looks to be a typical teen/ romance kind of thing.

Pike

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That was Ketchum!

Pretty messed up flick though!

I'd have to say though, if Laymon & Ketchum aren't considered taboo anymore, maybe it's time for a new flavor of taboo in horror! Take that as inspiration and have at it!

Horror seems to be branching out into more areas though. Elements of SF/F can be worked in to give the genre a wider appeal, too. I think it's a path that needs to be explored by writers of horror, only because I think SF/F is so large now it overshadows a lot of other genres.

Posting major fubar on my part:

The Girl Next Door is a Jack Ketchum novel. Sorry to all for confusing the two. that's what I get for surfing the net at 5am.

Pike

Pike said:

Posting major fubar on my part:

The Girl Next Door is a Jack Ketchum novel. Sorry to all for confusing the two. that's what I get for surfing the net at 5am.

Pike

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Sorry, can't use fubar anymore. Stanley tm'd it for their line of demolition tools.

http://www.stanleytools.com/default...me™+Fubar™+Functional+Utility+Bar

Which I think is effing brilliant. Carry on!

hi Fiends I just wanted to jump in here cause I like the subject: Horror Networking. I've been writing a supernatural southern gothic for quite some time. Initially I was just writing it as a hobby but now, at about 25K words, I'm trying to steer it toward publishability. I know the old adage to write what you read, but I don't enjoy reading horror. I can't finish most of the books I buy in the genre either because of sheer lousy writing, or too much excessive gore. Edward Lee, yech. Scott Nicholson, pee yew! I like Douglas Clegg, I don't think he's a particularly talented writer but The Hour Before Dark left a lasting impression on me. The writers that I'm hooked on now are mystery/thriller/detective writers: James Lee Burke, Dennis LeHane, Jeffrey Deaver. I'm coming to grips with the fact that my current WIP doesn't pigeonhole as a horror novel, but it's closer to that than anything else. I couldn't write a Deaver style mystery thriller to save my life, so in that sense I am not writing what I read, but I am writing the book that I want to read. Remember Michael McDowell's Blackwater series? It's like that. Long on family psychodrama and light on the horror. But who (in the publishing industry) is buying that sort of thing these days? That's a rhetorical question. Anyway, thanks for letting me ramble, it's nice to have finally found a support group to bang heads with!

Captain Howdy you found nice horror folk here.

Hey Captain and Wolfgang, welcome to the horror board!

As far as horror is concerned, (in my experiences) I've found that it seems to be on the way back. Or maybe it's just that I'm looking for markets that accept horror. Hmmm.

I have several 'dark' short stories published as well as two novels. I use the term dark because they are a blend of sci-fi or fantasy with horror. I have not had any adverse response to the work for blending or bending the genre, actually the opposite.

Write what is in your heart - what YOU want to write.

DL Hegel said:

Captain Howdy you found nice horror folk here.

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thanks DL, I'm less than a day old here and I've already encountered some *****s in another part of the forum. chewed me up and spat me out in the corner like so much worthless gristle they did. I like nice folk. Nothing wrong with being nice, even if we do read/write horror.

We are all nice BUT watch out for Jeanne she likes quotas and whips.

Captain Howdy said:

thanks DL, I'm less than a day old here and I've already encountered some *****s in another part of the forum. chewed me up and spat me out in the corner like so much worthless gristle they did. I like nice folk. Nothing wrong with being nice, even if we do read/write horror.

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Captain Howdy said:

thanks DL, I'm less than a day old here and I've already encountered some *****s in another part of the forum. chewed me up and spat me out in the corner like so much worthless gristle they did. I like nice folk. Nothing wrong with being nice, even if we do read/write horror.

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Hang in there, Captain. The seas are sometimes rough in these parts!

Captain Howdy said:

thanks DL, I'm less than a day old here and I've already encountered some *****s in another part of the forum. chewed me up and spat me out in the corner like so much worthless gristle they did. I like nice folk. Nothing wrong with being nice, even if we do read/write horror.

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Probably that name of yours that gets 'em going. Just give them a week or so to get to know you, then they'll really blossom. Nice to meet ya, Captain.

Pike said:

Laymon... Taboo? Well, they did make a movie based on one of his books so I guess he isn't so "taboo". Which book? The Girl Next Door. Haven't read or seen it but it looks to be a typical teen/ romance kind of thing.

Pike

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Laymon is mainstream in the UK - along with King and Koontz, you also get shelves of Laymon stuff in the horror section. Never understood why - some of the worse books I've ever read.

I agree that Laymon's quality is pretty variable... but when he was "on" he could deliver big scares very effectively... much like Graham Masterton in that respect.

My beef with Laymon is the amount of battering/ disemboweling/ rape of young women in his books... it gets pretty tedious and was the reason I gave up on him... about half-way through Resurrection Dreams I thought he was getting -way- too much fun out of hurting the (female) protagonist and put the book down, never to return to it, or to Laymon.

Willie

Welcome and see my website.

williemeikle said:

I agree that Laymon's quality is pretty variable... but when he was "on" he could deliver big scares very effectively... much like Graham Masterton in that respect.

My beef with Laymon is the amount of battering/ disemboweling/ rape of young women in his books... it gets pretty tedious and was the reason I gave up on him... about half-way through Resurrection Dreams I thought he was getting -way- too much fun out of hurting the (female) protagonist and put the book down, never to return to it, or to Laymon.

Willie

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I absolutely hate Laymon and his vile woman-hating spew. I read one of his books and that was enough for me. His gleeful depictions of a pre-pubscent girl being raped were bad enough, but then the paedophile's death, which one might reasonably expect to be as nasty as possible, was almost perfunctory. I avoided Laymon after that, but then found myself reading a truly horrid story of rape and torture-murder of young women in an anthology. Looked up the author's name with wild surmise...sure enough, it was one of his.

I agree that he seems to be having too much fun with hurting female characters, especially when he rushes by any male suffering (eg, the paedophile, and in the scene where said paedo kidnaps the little girl - the father is dispatched with a couple of blows, but the mother's murder is long and painful).

I like horror and can put up with a bit of dismemberment if it comes in a good enough package and ups the level of dread for the MC's well-being, but Laymon's mean-spirited, misogynistic nastiness feels sour as hell and I'm sorry he's so popular.

Pike said:

Posting major fubar on my part:

The Girl Next Door is a Jack Ketchum novel. Sorry to all for confusing the two. that's what I get for surfing the net at 5am.

Pike

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thanks to you guys I bought this book (Girl Next Door) on Thursday and read it over the weekend during the blizzard. In a word: yuck. I havent read anything that disturbing since I picked up (and never finished) American Psycho when that first came out. It was very well mounted and drew me in whether I liked it or not, and I would recommend it to hardcore horror fans, but I'm an old fashioned spook-me-on-the-sly kind of guy. I know it's only a novel but on a realistic level I find it difficult to believe the girl survived as long as she did and that the torture went past the point of extreme before anyone broke down and "told"...and the ending of the novel just wasn't satisfying enough to justify the amount of torture in second half of the book. Remind me not to watch the movie, I've already sat through the films Imprint and Audition and thats about all the realistic sadism I can take.