After the euphoria of graduating from
my MA, I’ve had a massive dump of realisation that I have a novel to finish. To
date, I have three more chapters to write, one of which is a zombie fight
showdown, where … spoiler alert … one of my key characters snuffs it. There is
also a gruesome dream sequence and a heartfelt scene that will have me weeping
as I write it.
I’m often asked why I write in the
genre I find, personally, so frightening. Paul Tremblay, an American horror
writer who is the master of creeping dread, openly admits he’s scared of
everything, and because of that, he implants his fears into his novels. For me,
it’s the fear of societal anarchy that feeds my dystopian horror.
Growing up, I was a secret horror
fiction fan, stashing them between my poetry library book loans long before I
started wearing black. However, going to university, leaving London to work in
Portsmouth, and then having a baby left me with little time to read fiction. It
wasn’t until I joined the local library with my baby daughter that my love of
fiction returned: while she slept in her buggy, I perused the adult section
with a rule of only one book loan at a time and to read it within a month.
But with reading came the return of a
far more deep-seated secret: writing. Frustrated with my poorly versed poetry,
I turned to writing a blog at the time of its boom in the early 2000s. I set a
target of a weekly post about my life as a mum with a very active, spirited and
hilarious child, but due to my lack of confidence, I posted anonymously. The
blog was picked up by a webzine, but by the time I had plucked up the courage
to submit pieces for a column, it had folded.
It wasn’t until I moved to rural Scotland
that I fell into the world of writing groups with a rich Scots language. The stunning
autumnal colours, the dark wintery nights with log fires (and no street lights
either), and the often brutal life and death of the local fauna, led me back to
horror. And when you’re writing for an MA in the horror genre, your contextual
reading has to follow suit. So, on reflection, it’s not surprising that living
next door to a farm through a pandemic, while having an unhealthy obsession
with zombies, inspired me to write the novel I’m determined to finish.
It's time to shed the secret, and be bold and honest in my creative writing, all while ignoring the nose-wrinklers that think women’s horror fiction is just sexy vampires, creepy folklore and haunted houses.
As David Bishop, a historical crime
writer, often says in his newsletters … onwards!
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