Oh, the horror

As June winds down, I’m still thinking about StokerCon, the Horror Writers Association’s annual conference from earlier in the month—the panels, the networking, the Final Frame shorts (especially Chäir and Scissors), the view from my hotel room on the 26^th floor, the brass necklace adorned with two skeletal hands that I bought from Hibernacula in the dealer’s room.

The conference schedule included so many panels I wanted to attend, but not having a Time-Turner in hand, I had to make some difficult choices. Here’s a look at two of my favorites.

Share

One panel that stood out focused on “making modern spaces scary.” Long-shuttered buildings and haunted houses are standard tropes in horror, but what about newer structures, contemporary locations, modern high-rises? The panelists ticked off a number of places to mine as horror locales: contemporary suburbia; medical settings like doctor’s offices and hospitals (especially for people with health issues); newer homes with sketchy recent histories or poor design; AI horror; apartment horror (other tenants, poor maintenance, adjacent noise), and the modern warehouse (think Amazon). I was reminded of a recent StokerCon, when honoree Joyce Carol Oates read aloud her short story “Mr. Stickum,” about an abandoned factory where teenage girls exact justice against predatory men.

The panel “Fatal Foliage” examined biological and eco-horror. Nature is often seen as “safe,” the panelists said, but it can be unpredictable and dangerous. Humans, they added, operate under the illusion that we are in control of nature, but nature will always have the final word. Eco-horror can include the unintentional thing you do in the wild that cascades into mayhem and destruction. And with a rapidly changing climate, the natural world can pose an even greater threat—not just from floods and super-storms. One panelist noted that our internal body temperature is cooling (it’s no longer 98.6F, but roughly 97.5F), making it easier for fungi to invade…

Of course, I came home from the conference with a number of books (I couldn’t resist!). I’m currently deep into The Marigold by Andrew Sullivan, who was a panelist on scary places (mentioned above). The story takes us to a future in which the city of Toronto is decaying alongside its residents. The Marigold is one of a number of high-rise apartment complexes built on the cheap. Sinkholes dot the cityscape, and a species of sentient fungi has become a threat.

Next up will be A Thousand Monstrous Forms, a soon-to-be-released horror novel by Saratoga Schaefer, author of Serial Killer Support Group, which I loved.

I just finished Everything Endless, a book of poetry by Linda D. Addison and Jamal Hodge; their book won a Bram Stoker this year.

I’m thrilled that my novel, Scream of the Silent Sun (Parisian Phoenix Publishing), is a finalist for first novel in this year’s Indie Book Awards.

Thanks for reading –

Dianna