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already sent by (output started at [ROOT]/includes/functions.php:3815) Horror World • View topic - Brilliant Article (and sure to draw fire)
I hate to dsiagree with you Rob, but to me she comes across as whiney and eletist. You are only a writer if another writer tells you so? That means I would have to believe every author blurb on every book out there.
I'm sorry she thinks there is so much dribble out there and that a lot of the horror novels released are not up to her standards or THE standard. I'm sure no one told William Ollie or Ben Larkin that they had to meet a standard before they released their excellent first novels.
I feel bad for her that she has to go to message boards and read author's chatting themselves and others up, that must really suck for her. But no one is forcing her to read posts by Steve Vernon, Brian Keene, Tom Piccirilli, Gary Bruanbeck and countless others who not only promote their own work on message boards, but also give nod's to others they enjoy. For those other author's she talks about who are not well known except on the message boards, don't read their stuff. Leave them alone and let them keep writing and selling to as many people as they can. They just might write something that will be up to her standards or THE standard some day and maybe Peter Straub will call him a writer.
Things must be so bad for her that she feels she must once again trod out the old horse concerning the 80's horror glut. Get over it, that was then. Readers will buy books from authors they like. If they buy one that sucks, that doesn't mean they will never buy a horror novel again. The 1980's made a lot of superstars in the horror field also, it didn't just produce hacks, and a lot of these guys are still selling books. It really bugs me when people trash contemporary horror and by bringing up the past.
She's not attacking small presses or struggling artists. She's decrying the veneration of mediocrity that's become a millstone around the neck of the genre. (You know? The kind of thing that makes life miserable for serious writers? That whole HWA-fueled "anyone can write and every fan should be published" school of insanity.) She's not attacking the genre; she's citicizing the mindset that has marginalized it ... and continues to choke the life out of it. The blockbuster novels of the 1980s were not being held up as icons of literary excellence but were employed to illustrate her points about marketing history and trends.
Oh dear. If even an intelligent, sophisticated reader reacts so poorly to this essay, I can't imagine what kind of feedback she must be getting.
...and please do not get upset with me for making this observation, but I've noticed, and even read quotes in her article that have substantiated this, that the old guard is very quick to decry the current state of the genre. It's just not something that occurs in horror, you see it in musicians and even in business. It's normal and natural. And while a few of the older author's do go out of their way to help and mentor new authors, a lot of them content themselves with simply providing blurbs on the covers of new books.
Great authors and great books (like The Pines) will always have an audience and will always be appreaciated. That won't change. The sales will change based on current trends and the economy, but if a book is good, it will be noticed by mainstream media as well as the chat rooms. U.S.A. Today in fact had a copy of Breathers and Pride And Predjudice And Zombies on the front page of their Life section.
Everyone has different tastes and to me anyway's, it pointless to try to dictate standards or to disparage books and trends. The market always rules.
seemed to me she was painting the small press as a bunch of losers and wannabes who don't have the skill level to be worthy of the larger houses. I'm not sure where she gets the whining part from. I don't really see that in my various msg board travels. I do think it's pretty ludicrous to say you're not a writer unless another writer further up the chain says you are, as that would leave out a pretty big (and to me an important) part of the equation, the reader, whose opinion I value much more than another writer, or even reviewers... and her part about reviewers being a bunch of glad-handing accomplices engaged in endless rounds of circle jerking, I haven't seen that either.
Maybe that was her experience in a distant past (I noticed she talked about CDs and POD) and figures the small press is still like that. Maybe she figures people like Delirium, Bloodletting Press, Cargo Cult, Full Moon Press, Bad Moon, Nec Evil, Thunderstorm... should all be painted with a wide brush of irrelevancy. I don't think that way, though, and doubt any well informed person does either.
If that's her opinion, I guess that's just the way she feels about it. Obviously, I feel differently. So, no, I didn't find the article all that thought provoking or insightful.
_________________ Lord Of The Mountain available at:
As i'm not immersed in horror culture, I had no idea who the author was or what she represented until I went to the horror garage website linked in the bio and saw immediately the types of things which really turns me off in horror culture such as the prominently displayed "ladies of horror" photography entries.
ugh.
No thank you.
If the concern is over the perception of your work within the fandom, whether they are a "legitimate" fandom or simply a community of wannabes who thinks they are greater than they are, isn't it possible to just ignore them?
As as to the public's perception of what horror is or is not, they are the ones who made millionaires out of Stephenie Meyer and keep Laurel K Hamilton from eating shoe stew, so you'll have to forgive me if their acceptance is not important to me as a fan.
However, the string of successful adaptations was kind of interesting to posit as a theory for the beginning of the horror genre. Would love to know more about the publishing/marketing history of these books.
edit: ha. Didn't even notice this was from 7 years ago.
I have to learn to slow down when I write, or not to not write at all when I am feeling particulary excited. As usual, lots of mistakes in my posts, but I think you get the meaning.
And Rob, I never thought you were attacking me. I love a good discussion. Maybe too much.
If it weren't for small press and self promoters I never would have discovered the brilliant writing of Steve Vernon, Greg F. Gifune, David Niall Wilson, Ben Larkin, Ronald Damien Malfi, Harry Shannon, Steven Savile and others. The woman is a twit.
_________________ Reading:
The Spartacus War - Barry Strauss Slow Death - Jim Fielder The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire - Edward Gibbon
I think it's a pretty solid article with some very thoughtful and accurate (at least, in my opinion) comments. I love the horror genre but often find it difficult to defend it when both its authors and fans appear to so easily embrace mediocrity. Paperbacks riddled with errors, poor grammatical structure, hackneyed storylines and paper-thin characters are too prevalent. Of course, this is all subject to individual opinion. Ttzuma, you stated, "I happen to think that most of what I am reading today is mediocre at worst! There are some great authors and novels out there, more good than bad..." Unfortunately, I feel the opposite about the current state of the genre. If I read 10 horror novels, chances are 1 or 2 will impress me. I match this with other genres--and even mainstream literature--and I find my approval is higher. I don't think there's anything wrong with wanted our genre to be the strongest it can be.
vampire cockroaches sounds like the plot to a horrible novelization tie-in from the 80s.
i'm kind of surprised that no one has tried to re-create that sort of rushed pedantic style in a series of movie novelizations to films which never existed. done as a series of novellas under 200 pages each and sold on the cheap, i think it could be a successful short run venture.
entertaining in its intentional knowing awfulness if nothing else
my own would be a nature's revenge movie set in the mid 80s where vietnamese pot bellied pigs turn against their owners thanks to programming by their communist masters and it's up to a small band of people who know the truth to shut down the evil foreign influence. The main character would be Duke Handson, a vietnam vet turned animal vet with a tortured past who has a score to settle.
I get what she's saying, and I can agree with some of it. But I feel like she focused too much on the negative. When she does bring up a point about good writers being out there, it's tempered with talk of the publishers being mediocre. I can see how Tt felt the way he did, but I can also see how Rob and Ronald feel the way they do.
What might be interesting is seeing how the author feels today, seven years later. I wonder if some of her thoughts about message boards would be different, especially in an economy like today's.
And I completely agree with Laurel about finding authors who've come on the boards to talk about their books. William Ollie could've come here, promoted his book and left, but he didn't. He comes back to do the same things we do. As does Steve. And as does Robert, who started this thread. I would hope a place like Horror World would change Paula Guran's mind.
I think what Laurel was talking about was Greg's appearences and his posting over here in The Cellar. Greg has been great about discussing his books with us and sharing his thoughts on our opinions of his work. It goes back to that message board issue we were talking about earlier. The only other chat type venue I have seen Greg post is in The Haunt. And he did do that heavy metal interview.
Though I hear he is going to be next month's interview in Playboy.
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