"What's wrong with your brain?"
"How do you come up with this crap?"
"Doesn't it scare your spouse to know you think this stuff up?"
Writing horror and dark fantasy opens one up to a lot of comments. Well, actually being any type of author or artist does, but this specific post is about penning horror.
When crafting tales meant to scare, terrify, or disturb, one needs to have some sort of vat to draw inspiration and ideas from. Where authors get said ideas is a valid question, a natural curiosity for those who do not share our specific creative pursuits. So, where do my ideas come from?
Many people assume it's from a perversion (those people are rather annoying, and I tend not to respond to them) childhood fears are the second assumption. But why? Perhaps it's because children, small and fragile creatures, innocent and vulnerable as they are, also have grand imaginations. These imaginations can be used for fantastical daydreams, but they can also produce terrible nightmares. Some lucky individuals even have childhood fears so grand, they become entrenched into our psyche thus following us into adulthood.
So, what are my childhood fears, and how they shape my writing? If at all ....
As a child I was haunted by my own vivid nightmares and fantastical daydreams. Many of which were fueled by movie characters such as Gollum. Others were classic cases of clowns and spiders. If like me, eight legged crawlers are an unwelcome sight to you, rest assured my novels will always be free of them. I am still far too afraid of to write about them! Clowns and slimy creatures eating raw fish are fair game though.
While my novels feature monsters and demons, these are not the sources of horror, terror, or disturbia in my works. Yes, monsters and beasts are terrible and seem insurmountable, but true fear lives far closer to the human condition. The things that happen in real life, the stories that haunt our news, that is true fear.
One childhood fear I did not mention above was immobility. I was frequently visited by nightmares where my body was frozen, meanwhile I could hear and feel everything happening around me, my vision however, was always blurry. In short, sleep paralysis.
In these dreams I remained utterly helpless as I was engulfed by overgrown arachnids, or giants walked across my chest restricting my breath. To this day I am utterly terrified of being unconscious, ie a coma or other, where I can hear and feel what's happening but unable to move my own body. The root of this fear still haunts me, still occupies my turbulent thoughts, and is a persistent theme in my novels.
Helplessness
Being at the complete and unrelenting mercy of the world around you.
Being unheard, ignored, and defenseless.
Because being helpless in a world of monsters hidden in plain sight, is utterly unnerving, leading to some of the most heinous depravity at the hands of your fellow humans.
While the human condition can lead to insurmountable joy and unconditional love, it can also be cruel and unrelenting. There have been many times in my life I have felt like this. Small, unheard, ignored, and helpless in my own life. And I believe this is something we can all relate too. We were all children at one time, we have all been harmed or wronged in some way, some more than others. But it is this universal suffering, this universal human condition, that is both relatable and terrifying.
Many seek to sweep this suffering under the proverbial rug. To put on false smiles and pretend all is well and their lives and that of their families, are perfect. Nothing terrible ever happens behind their closed doors. In my stories, I often drag this depravity to the forefront. Not for the joy of it, but because that is what nags at my mind. These thoughts, these nightmares, these memories, are the clouds hanging above my head following my every move, staining my every thought.
In many ways my writing became a cathartic release for them without my knowing it.
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