Some of you may recognize Come Little Children.
I’ve recently featured this book on my blog and I’m thrilled to do so again!
I am almost done reading it and will be back soon to tell ya all about it.
I have D. Melhoff here today to tell us about writing horror.
Then you get a juicy peek inside the book and a great giveaway!
Enjoy!
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Now I’m turning this over to the author. Take it away D.
Blood, Guts, and Child Killers: The Darker the Book, the Better the Sales
By D. Melhoff
When you tell people that you’re a writer, their first reaction is a mildly impressed look followed by the inevitable question: “What do you write?”
If your answer is “horror”, then the response is pretty predictable. Either the person will take a step back and reply with a few harmless questions related to the business of writing (“Who’s the publisher?”, “Do you have an agent?”, “How long have you been writing?”), or they’ll take a step forward and start quizzing you on the plot of your last book.
Either way, people are usually interested in writers. They think we’re glamorous, maybe, or different from all of the humdrum accountants or teachers or nurses they hang around with every day. But it’s the second group of people—the ones who ask questions about our books—who are truly interested. Because if the conversation with the first group ever returns to the topic of horror, they usually seem obligated to apologize and say something like, “Good luck, but horror isn’t really my thing, so I’ll have to pass.”
Which is totally fine. Some genres don’t turn people’s crank.
It’s also fine because, as an author, a narrower demographic means a smaller target market which is often easier (and cheaper) to reach. Think of it this way: would Kitchen Widgets Inc. rather pay $4 million for a Super Bowl ad that reaches 100 million viewers—40% of whom are female, and only .1% of which fall into their key demographic—or $100,000 to air an ad on the Food Network that reaches 5 million people, but interests 75% of the viewer base?
Answer: Unless they like burning cash, they’ll go for the Food Network every time. It’s a targeted channel with a much lower cost of reaching the right people.
The same applies to books. Supernatural thrillers don’t have as much mass appeal as genres like mystery, romance, or historical fiction, but there’s still a strong clique of readers hungry for new twists and scares.
So then the question becomes: “what’s too much?”
Can anything cross the line these days, or repel even the most dedicated horror enthusiasts?
I think it depends on the project.
I have to admit, when I went through my second pass of Come Little Children, there was a certain scene that stuck out as going too far. I remember my eyes getting wider as I read it over and thought, “Oh no, that’s too much. That crosses a line.” The whole scenario just seemed out of character. It was violence for violence-sake, and I had to remind myself that my character wouldn’t have behaved that way in that specific situation, so ultimately I went back and toned it down. Again, the only reason I did that, though, was because it wasn’t true to the character.
In general, I don’t think any topic is too taboo for fiction. We all have different tastes, yes, but at the end of the day the biggest thing that people want is a good story. It’s pretty much impossible to shock readers anymore, so even with Come Little Children, I never felt I had to censor the content because readers would think that fictional child murders went too far.
And listen. I don’t sit down with a daily goal of how many kids I want to kill off. I tell the story that I see in my head, and I try to write the darkest, most exciting situations I can conjure up for likeminded readers. Plus, you can’t please everyone—not even all of your closest friends and relatives. My grandmothers, for example, have made it very clear that they don’t like horror stories, but I just tell them I don’t particularly like their potato salads either, so we agree to disagree and move on.
Honesty’s always the best policy, both in writing and real life. It’ll toughen your skin, but it’ll make you stronger too, so stay honest. Even with grandma.
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Come Little Children
By
D. Melhoff
BLURB:
The Nolan morgue is more than just an ordinary funeral home. When their newest employee uncovers a supernatural conspiracy connected to a string of child murders, she must use every shred of her intelligence to stop a new breed of serial killer and escape the morgue alive.
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Excerpt
The old hands worked carefully with the added confidence of having done this hundreds of times. Their maneuvers were quick and precise. Fluid. Surgical.
A scalpel touched a point between the nipples on the cadaver’s chest and drifted north, unzipping the skin exactly seven inches along the sternum. Shadows played out the rest on the concrete walls: the worker selected a heavier device and hovered over the outline of the body, flicking a switch and activating a high, screeching vibration that trailed through the air and disappeared into the silhouette’s chest.
Instantly the hum dropped an octave—ggvvrrrrr, ck-ck, ggvvrrrrr—choking and sputtering as it coughed up particles of bone dust.
Ggvvrrrrr! CK-CK! Ggvvrrrr!
The mist made a macabre Tyndall effect in the lamplight.
Beyond these specks, the worker turned off the electric saw and brought up a wooden box the size of a tea chest, then withdrew something from inside.
Something small.
Something odd.
It was too dark to see what the object was, but the worker handled it nimbly and lowered it into the body’s rib cage.
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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nM0QAA607yo]
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About D. Melhoff
D. Melhoff was born in a prairie ghost town located an inch above the Canadian-American border. He credits King, Poe, Hitchcock, Harris, Raimi, and his second grade school teacher, Mrs. Lake, for turning him to horror.
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