This is a question that I'm asked often by people. Sometimes it's fans at conventions, other times it's friends, family, or just people who hear that I write horror and ask me to define my work. I'm usually stumped. However hard I've tried to define the word horror, as it applies to my writing, I've come up with something that just doesn't seem to work. It doesn't capture every possibility, or it lessens the import of what I'm often trying to do with my fiction.
Last Friday, I discovered the answer.
Horror is ... just a phonecall away.
At 4:30 pm, sitting at my desk in work just thinking about calling it a day, my mother rang. She told me that my one-year-old son Daniel was on his way to hospital with my wife. He'd started having breathing difficulties in the local park, coughing, gasping for breath, and by the time the ambulance arrived his nose was turning blue, he was foaming at the mouth and passing in and out of consciousness.
They 999'd him all the way to the hospital.
It took me 45 minutes to make my way there. Every seconds of every one of those minutes I was imagining what would face me when I arrived at the local A&E (the ER for my American friends). I don't know how many laws I broke driving there. It was rush hour, but now and then there was space to zip past a car, cut an extra second off the journey.
Daniel's fine. None of the doctors or specialists could tell us what was wrong with him, and after a night in hospital under observation, he came home on Saturday. He's been poorly ever since with a fever - maybe it was all a build-up to that - but nothing quite like what happened on Friday.
It's the not knowing that provided the horror. Spending almost an hour travelling from work to hospital, never sure of what I'd find when I got there. As it was, Tracey was nursing a lethargic, tired Daniel on her lap, but in my imagination there had been a hundred other possibilities. It was one time in my life when I wished that I did not have a wild imagination.
So that's horror, from now on when anyone asks me to define the term. It's a very personal definition ... but I also guess that the answer - Horror is just a phonecall away - applies to everyone reading this, in many different ways.
... coming soon. I had some exciting news last week which I should be able to share in a couple of weeks. It's a bit unusual, but I'm thrilled. Watch this space!
I arrived home from the Horrorfind Convention in Baltimore just a few days ago, and it's only now I feel fully recovered! It was the most fun I've ever had at a convention, and I probably did the most business as well. That's what I like:-)
Spent a lot of time with Rich SanFilippo, Chris Golden and Jim Moore, three great guys. I must publicly apologise to Chris for dragging him to see AVP, the biggest heap of steaming turd I have seen in a cinema for years. This film will kill both franchises dead, which is a real shame. Saying that Chris and I did have a good giggle at just how bad the film was, especially the 'bullet-time' face hugger. Oh my.
I succeeded in seeing the sunrise in on the Saturday morning, and retired to bed at 7:30 after a swim! Probably a bit silly after 18 hours drinking, but I'm still here, and the pool was very shallow. There were loads of room parties and drinking dens, and Rich and I seemed to find them all!
The dealers' room was Heaven. Only one or two book dealers, but many more selling everything from rare DVDs to baby bibs with the timeless saying 'What the fuck you looking at?' I didn't get that one for Daniel because Ellie can read, but I did buy him the 'Satan Loves Me' bib. Looking forward to using that one next time we pop out to the local pub.
I stayed with Keene and his lovely wife Cassie for a day after the convention, and had a fine, relaxing time. My week was ended with a little old lady puking on my trainers on the plane on the way home. I can't complain. I'm a horror writer.
Welcome back to the blog that never gets blogged! Full of good intentions, I continue to fail spectacularly in keeping this regular and up-to-date. My excuse this time is that I’ve been away with my family, and before that I was struggling to complete DESOLATION so that I could deliver it on deadline to Leisure and Borderlands. Well, I managed to do that, so now I have no excuse. Except that I’m away tomorrow for a week at Horrorfind…
Meantime, I’m still waiting on some news. Writing is all about waiting. It’s a lonely business, true, but a frustrating business too. I seem to be waiting for news – on film deals, book deals, short stories etc – all the time, and it seems that the next bit of news is always potentially bigger. I’m hoping to hear quite soon about this current deal, and I’ll post details here as soon as I can (whatever the outcome). I’m keeping my fingers crossed. Good job I’m not a nail-biter, I’d be down to my elbows by now.
I’m working on a Poe story at the moment for a Cemetery Dance anthology, and then I’ll be writing a Jules Verne story to submit to a Mammoth anthology, and then after that I’ll be thinking about the second book in the Assassin Series for Necessary Evil Press. And amongst all that I’ll be starting my new novel … but which new novel depends on the pending news.
A word about pirate DVDs: I’ve decided that I hate them. I’ve got a couple of friends who seem to be able to track them down, but I’m sick of watching new films only to find the last 3 minutes has been cut off, or it’s jumpy, or people are creeping back and forth to the loo when it’s secretly filmed in a cinema, or it’s dark and grainy … The whole point I have a DVD player is so that I can watch films with a top quality picture. It’s all very well having ‘new’ films before everyone else, but who gives a shit when they’re virtually unwatchable anyway! I STILL don’t know what happened right at the end of BIG FISH. And that pisses me off. So from now on, it’s hired movies for me.
Right, I’m off to pack my suitcase.
EXORCISING ANGELS, the novella I wrote with Simon Clark, has been nominated for two more awards: the British Fantasy Award, and the World Fantasy Award! This is my first World Fantasy nomination, and to say I'm pleased is like saying Pluto is a bit chilly. I'm ecstatic! Winners of British Fantasy will be announced at FantasyCon in September, and the World Fantasy Awards will be presented at World Fantasy Convention in October. Sad to say I won't be at either convention, but still I keep my fingers crossed!
I'm off to Baltimore tomorrow for Horrorfind, my first visit to this convention. I'm one of the Special Guests – of which there are many, including Alice Cooper, Rob Zombie, George Romero, Joe Lansdale and many, many others. If you're going, please do come up and say Hi (after you’ve spoken to all the famous people).
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