{"id":1553,"date":"2022-02-21T11:39:25","date_gmt":"2022-02-21T16:39:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/?p=1553"},"modified":"2022-03-12T22:05:30","modified_gmt":"2022-03-13T03:05:30","slug":"faq-2-how-did-you-first-get-into-horror-fiction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/faq-2-how-did-you-first-get-into-horror-fiction\/","title":{"rendered":"FAQ #2: \u201cHow Did You First Get Into Horror Fiction?\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
Some, but not all, of my early influences.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n


\n<\/a>I get this one a lot. While I can\u2019t say that any one specific book or story set me down my dark fiction path, I can share some early influences.<\/p>\n

When I was a kid, we\u2019d spend summers at the shore in\u00a0New Jersey. During one of our visits, it rained. A lot. My dad, trying to find a way to amuse a bored kid stuck indoors, went to a bookstore at the nearby shopping center and came home with an armload of L. Frank Baum’s Oz books.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Let me tell you something: If the only thing you know about the world of Oz is the Judy Garland movie? Whew. Even that relatively innocent film has some scary aspects, but the books are pure nightmare fuel. Have you ever read the Tin Woodman\u2019s origin story? I wrote some flash fiction based on that here<\/a>.\u00a0Spoiler: The Tin Woodman\u00a0used to be made of flesh\u2026until the day he picked up a cursed axe.<\/p>\n

These books are not considered horror, but I don\u2019t see how you can consider the Tin Man having a conversation with his own severed head to be anything but<\/i>. Body parts do not die in the land of Oz. Which adds yet another level of creepy to the whole story.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Two other early influences that have stayed with me to this day are Shirley Jackson\u2019s \u201cThe Lottery\u201d and Edgar Allan Poe\u2019s \u201cThe Cask of Amontillado.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe Lottery<\/a>\u201d was included in a school textbook mostly comprised of the usual fat-free bran muffin stories that teach\u00a0students that reading is boring and should be avoided whenever possible. Some editor messed up and put \u201cThe Lottery\u201d in there, and I\u2019m so glad they did. I don\u2019t think it was ever part of our lesson plan, but out of curiosity I read it anyhow.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

And then read it again.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

And again.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The simple, plain-spoken storytelling and the slow-burn plot leading to such a stunning gut punch of an ending? I\u2019d never read anything like it. I didn\u2019t know stories like this were\u00a0allowed<\/em>. Without relying on any of horror\u2019s standard trappings like ghosts or monsters, Jackson wrote something utterly terrifying.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

My favorite (?) factoid about \u201cThe Lottery\u201d is that after it ran in The New Yorker<\/i>, Jackson got letters from people who asked her where this ritual took place\u2026so they could go watch it. Now that\u2019s<\/em> scary.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

My memory of this period is hazy, but I think \u201cThe Cask of Amontillado<\/a>\u201d might have been in the same textbook.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Weirdly, I have found two different versions of the Poe story online. This one<\/a> is the one I read, because the jingling bells on Fortunato\u2019s cap were a detail that wormed under my skin, and it\u2019s missing from the other version. (I apologize for the white text on the dark background; I am An Old and this is murder on my eyes.)<\/p>\n

My English teacher had a lot of fun teaching this one to a class\u00a0of sheltered private school girls. She pointed out the joke a bunch of us would have missed: Montresor whipping a trowel out of his cloak and saying \u201cSee? I am too a mason. Ha ha!\u201d Given what he was about to do with that trowel, the joke takes on an extra dimension of creepiness. The details as Montresor leads Fortunato to his fate are chilling: dim tunnels, crypts, bones, drippy walls, and Fortunato\u2019s endless cough. But even with the more standard gothic horror trappings, this story has one scary thing in common with \u201cThe Lottery:\u201d It could really happen.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

And after reading a biography of Poe, I came to realize that Poe the man was every bit as vengeful and spiteful as Montresor. Indeed, this story apparently began as part of a pissing contest between him and another writer who\u2019d mocked him in a story, information that did not surprise me one bit. And I\u2019m sure he\u2019d have loved to brick a critic or two up into a wall forever.<\/p>\n

In fact\u2026who\u2019s to say he didn\u2019t?<\/i> *Gulp*<\/p>\n

Later on, I found a cousin\u2019s battered copy of Dracula<\/i>, a story I\u2019d heard a lot about but never read. My father, still in the habit of picking up books he thought might interest me, got me several illustrated books about Hammer horror films, movies about Dracula, and the like. Why\u2019d he do that? I don\u2019t know, but it\u00a0sealed my fate.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

A brief summary: How did I get into horror? Basically, it\u2019s my dad\u2019s fault.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I get this one a lot. While I can\u2019t say that any one specific book or story set me down…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[111,110,4],"tags":[102,112,38,17,5],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1553"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1553"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1553\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1608,"href":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1553\/revisions\/1608"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1553"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1553"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1553"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}