Horror Fiction has its Aficionados

Ben Baldwin's cover for Black Static 15

And Peter Tennant who is the book reviewer and a contributing editor to Black Static, the TTA Press Horror and Dark Fantasy bimonthly, has written this week’s blog.

A SAD LITTLE WANKER’S GUIDE TO HORROR

In a land far away (beyond the forest) and a time long ago, a reviewer once decried a magazine for which I later became a slush reader as being targeted at ‘sad little horror wankers’. Being a perverse sort of guy I quite liked the term, in a perverse sort of way. Like the gay men who neuter the language of homophobia by making it their own, I decided to adopt this terminology and use it for my own ends. Over the next few years I wrote several ‘sad little wanker’ guides to the various genres, casting a satirical eye over the clichés and traits we all know and love, even as we realise how absurd they often are.

This is the guide for Horror:-

Say that Shaun Hutson is a great writer. And mean it.

Always dress in black and wear a heavy silver cross on a leather thong round your neck.

Remember that LIVE is an anagram of EVIL.

Study Nietzsche and pepper your conversation with quotations from The Anti-Christ and Beyond Good and Evil.

Think that the Marquis De Sade was a great philosopher and regard The 120 Days of Sodom as a seminal work of horror fiction.

Learn to say things like, “I have the heart of a small child. It’s in a jar on my desk,” and keep a straight face while doing so.

When asked what your favourite song is, answer either I Left My Heart in San Francisco or 50 Ways To Cleave Your Lover, a Paul Simon tune to which you have made up your own fun lyrics.

Know all the words to Bohemian Rhapsody, and think that they could all too easily be applied to your own situation.

Laugh loudly, and at inappropriate moments (now would be a good time).

If male and heterosexual, refer to any significant other as “the ghoul friend”, and carry on doing so long after the joke has worn thin. If a significant other, don’t laugh, as it will only encourage him.

Believe that J. K. Potter is the illegitimate love child of Richard Upton Pickman and Poe’s lost Lenore, and that all of his paintings are done from life.

Attend the BFS Convention and spend time at the bar standing next to Ramsey Campbell. Go through the rest of your life saying things like, “When Ramsey and I…” and “As I was saying to Ramsey…”

Always drink port wine or cherry brandy, and remember to smack your lips suggestively when doing so.

When in a restaurant have your steak rare, and with a side order of fried tomatoes. If ordering liver, do so in a loud voice and ask for fava beans and a nice Chianti.

Spend time loitering in graveyards, because you enjoy the special ambience of such places and regard the random formations of moss on neglected tombstones as a Rorschach test posed by the universal mind.

Light a black candle at midnight and gaze soulfully into a mirror; recite “Clive Barker, Future of Horror” six times in an appropriately reverential tone of voice.

Keep in mind what Burroughs said about paranoia and that FRIENDS is simply FIENDS spelled with an R. Be ambivalent about what this means, if anything.

Regard all of your friends as potential victims, and tell them you have lurid fantasies in which they die horribly. Justify this as trying plot scenarios out for size.

Admit to being confused about your sex life; specifically, why you don’t have a sex life.

Confess that you have issues to address regarding your gender orientation. Suspect that gays also find you deeply unattractive.

Think that power tools are an affirmation of your true being. Tell no-one that you have a pet name for your favourite chain saw.

Keep a photograph of Poppy Z Brite in a silver frame by the side of your bed, so that her face will be the last thing you see at night before you go to sleep and the first thing you see in the morning, if you wake up.

On Valentine’s Day send Poppy a card with a picture of a broken heart drawn in red ink, and tell her that you drool at the thought of her Exquisite Corpse. Sign yourself “A Lost Soul.”

Have an encyclopaedic knowledge of the workings of the BBFC. Be able to recite at the drop of a hat the name of every film that’s been cut by the Board in the last forty years, and give exact details of how many seconds were removed from each one and what they contained.

Advocate the abolition of all forms of censorship, while insisting that the fatheads who disagree with you should keep their stupid opinions to themselves.

Be clever enough to slip the writer’s license excuse out of your sleeve at a moment’s notice.

Declare that violence should only be used when it is an integral part of the plot.

Never use a plot where violence isn’t an integral part.

Complain bitterly about being misunderstood when the critics dismiss your latest insightful and cutting edge foray into the darkest recesses of the human psyche as “another excuse to indulge in sexual violence.”

Secretly, fear that they understand you far better than you understand yourself.

Never forget. Never forgive. Nevermore.

Wear a black armband on October the 7th, the anniversary of Edgar Allan Poe getting intimate with the Conqueror Worm, and again on the 15th of March, when Howard Phillips Lovecraft shuffled off this mortal coil.

Be able to recite the Lord’s Prayer backwards. And in Latin.

When listing your hobbies mention that you get a buzz out of observing at post-mortems and won the school prize for innovative taxidermy three years running.

Argue that AIDS and CJD etc are God’s way of telling us that horror fiction is still relevant.

Think that God and Cronenberg are interchangeable terms.

If in doubt, describe a thing as Kafkaesque.

Make no major decisions without consulting your ouija board.

Practise saying KingKoontzHerbert as if it’s all one word, and try to make it sound like the name of a little known and ill-regarded member of the Cthulhu pantheon.

Never admit to having read anything by the Unholy Triumvirate, or if you do protest vigorously that you didn’t enjoy it. As a last resort leer obscenely and declare you’re King’s No.1 Fan!

Regardless of the above, be willing to share with anyone who’ll listen your remarkable insight that The Green Mile is a modern interpretation of The Crucifixion, with John Coffey as Jesus Christ (JC, geddit?) and an electric chair in place of The Cross (seriously, am I the only one who’s cottoned on to this?).

Think New Orleans is your favourite place in all the world, even if you’ve never been there.

Believe in vampires, an honest politician and a hundred and one other impossible and contradictory things before breakfast.

Keep a hatchet wielding zombie maggot with an erection in your attic so that you’ll have something more interesting than the gas bill to talk about with your mates down the pub.

Whistle, and he’ll come to you.

Know who Robert W Chambers is. Care.

Scour the shelves of every second-hand bookshop that you come upon in the absurd hope of finding an illustrated first edition of Alhazred’s The Necronomicon.

Read The Female Eunuch at least twice, so that you can huff and puff with self-righteous indignation if anyone accuses you of being a misogynist.

Praise Buffy the Vampire Slayer for its post-modern perspective and providing young women with a positive role model. Watch both the early evening episode and the after the watershed repeat. Claim to be able to tell the difference.

Say things like, “I love children, but I couldn’t eat a whole one,” and still keep a straight face.

Leave specific instructions in your will regarding the disposal of your mortal remains. Be fearful of premature ejaculation and Freudian slips.

Suspect that all funeral directors are repressed necrophiliacs (it’s a dirty job, and why else would anybody do it?).

Rest In Pieces. You’ve earned it.

Here is a genre and fan glossary for those of you unfamiliar with the intricacies of horror fiction and related movies.
Cons/Conventions In the early/mid 1930’s SF readers were conversing via the letter columns of pulp magazines.  This was unsatisfactory so they started meeting in convenient cities and hotels. These became the first Science Fiction conventions and now they come in a range of genres and sizes, from local to country to world. (This year AUSSIECON 4 the 68^th World Science Fiction Convention will be held in Melbourne, Australia whereas the World Horror Convention – WHC 2010 – will be in Brighton UK) SF conventions seem to predate literary and crime writing festivals but not film festivals.
Slush When New York was the world’s centre of pulp magazine publishing piles of manuscripts would accrete in doorways under the letter boxes over a weekend like piles of half melted snow drifting in via the gaps around the doors. Hence the ‘slush pile’, it was not intended to be derogatory. Genre magazines like Interzone and Black Static are among the few publishing outlets to accept and publish ‘slush’. The possibility of your story’s acceptance at TTA is around 1 in 40.
Alhazred’s The Necronomicon. A book of fearful secrets featured in HP Lovecraft’s fiction.
Cthulhu Most of those secrets concerned Cthulhu and his fellow Elder Gods.
BFS British Fantasy Society not British Flute Society

TTA Press

This is the 3^rd TTA Press Incwriters blog. The first was posted on February 5th. The second on the 12^th. TTA Press are publishers of Interzone, Black Static and Crimewave. There are e reader versions of them all at Fictionwise. All three are fiction magazines containing original short stories. Between them they contain around 80 stories per year and that may well make TTA the UK’s biggest publisher of new short stories. Interzone is now in its 28^th year, Black Static in its 3^rd and Crimewave its 11^th.

Interzone is sold around the world and Black Static can be ordered from UK newsagents. A six-issue subscription to either costs £21 in the UK, £24 in the EU and £27 everywhere else.

Note Many Black Static stories are available as a podcast.