Category: Philosophy of Horror
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Horror vs Picture Books (or Good vs Evil)
When my old friend Jack Tyler invited me to join Threads That Bind, I hesitated. The truth is, it’s been a while since I’ve written horror. My writing career began with dark fantasy, dark steampunk, and gothic horror. I later edited the dreadpunk anthologies DeadSteam and DeadSteam II, contributing short stories to each. But since…
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The Thrill of Horror
Horror — an intense feeling of fear, shock, or disgust. The definition itself terrifies most people, while in others it invokes a deep fascination and pure ecstasy. Why are some people drawn to the horror genre? Are there peculiarities in the personalities of these people? Is it just the adrenaline released in our bodies by…
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What I Learned In The Pool (Of Blood)
Hey there! Hello from the wily lands of the splatterpunk subgenre. SO ripe, so fresh, so little known or understood. While I know many find this sub to be less than lovelerly, I, as a punk fiction indie author, am determined to write tales in all the punks. So splatterpunk and I had to find…
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Why Are Vampires Scary?
As a writer of vampire horror, I find it useful to take a look at what makes them an effective source of horror. This is not necessarily intended to be a definitive or exhaustive list. Also, just because I cite a book under one category doesn’t mean it won’t fit under other categories as well.…
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WORLD SPLATTER DAY
I am writing this on Monday afternoon, World Goth Day, in case you didn’t know. It’s an appreciation of the subculture and its music that began in the UK in 2009, and since the previous Saturday, yours truly has used it to continue shaking off the vestiges of social anxiety disorder by going out to…
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A Little Horror
Welcome to the web, fans of darkness. I come before you today to offer a decided change of pace. You see, a good number of column-inches have been presented here of late, touting the work of the late H.P. Lovecraft, the father of Cosmic Horror. I’ve enjoyed the work of the Master, and have commented,…
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Cosmic Horror Without Lovecraft?
Cosmic Horror without Lovecraft. Hm. Yet that is what someone on Twitter proposed in response to my previous post. So I asked myself how about sword and sorcery without Robert E Howard? Or Sword and Planet without Edgar Rice Burroughs? Nah. Not possible. When a writer is responsible for creating or defining a genre or…
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Facing the Sinister
The other week someone asked me about the symbolism behind the emblem of the Office of Unidentified Phenomena (OUP). The fictional agency for which my paranormal investigator Pierce Mostyn works to save America and the world from those things that make big bumps in the night. It’s a good question, because the design wasn’t haphazard.…
Threads that Bind 