Welcome to the first-ever issue of Haunted Books & Haunted Girls, a newsletter all about writing and ghosts. I’m so happy that you’re here. Today, we’re talking about what it means to write horror when the world feels bleak, and how there’s so much healing to be found within dark stories. If you haven’t subscribed already, please consider signing up below (for free!), so you never miss an issue of this newsletter. It’s always spooky szn here.
Horror is not hopeless.
On the surface, of course, horror can be unsettling. It’s supposed to be, right? It’s meant to scare, to unnerve. To slither under your skin and outstay its welcome.
At times, horror can be gory and grisly, nightmarish and raw. It can leave you with a lingering knot of fear in your stomach, one that finds its way beneath layers of your dreams at night. A horror movie can cause you to startle and scream—sometimes even in unison with your neighbors in the theater, in a sort of shared, cathartic terror.
But horror can be—and often is—so much more than all of these things.
Why write horror, some might ask, when the world outside is already so horrific? Why weave stories of death and loss and grief, of monsters and demons, when headlines are horrible enough? When you can turn on the news and see so much worse?
Why not write something uplifting? Something hopeful?
The thing is…I do. All horror writers do.
Within horror, there is hope.
I wrote the book that got me my agent during the peak of the pandemic. At the time, the world outside was scary and lonely. I hadn’t seen friends or certain family members in months, and without any prognosis on a finite end to the pandemic, I didn’t know what the future held.
Amid so much doubt and uncertainty, I found myself unexpectedly comforted by certain horror mediums; The Haunting of Bly Manor and Hill House were absolute favorites at the time. And when I started writing that book, I knew I wanted to create something that made me feel the way those titles did: Scared and unsettled, sure. But also sad. Wistful. Nostalgic.
And hopeful.
In a sense, this special feeling of fear coupled with a note of sadness should be its own singular emotion. It should have its own name. The feeling of looking over your shoulder into the shadows, while also looking at parts of yourself that might have otherwise stayed hidden. Thinking about the dark, unknown elements of the universe, while also thinking about people and memories you might have once left behind.
Horror can do that.
A story about a girl tumbling into an inescapable, nightmarish cult that makes her its May Queen is also a story about a girl conquering trauma and grief. A story about a woman visited by an apparition of a “bent neck lady” throughout her entire life is also about the way a broken family is its own kind of ghost. Like other genres, we can see ourselves reflected in horror—not necessarily in its otherworldly, most gruesome scenes, but rather the feelings that linger long after the story ends.
As a writer of all things spooky and dark, that’s the kind of horror I strive to create. A story that makes you want to sleep with the lights on, a story that puts an ache in your heart, too.
My books are about supernatural hauntings, but they’re also about the way we haunt each other, the way we haunt ourselves. It’s how regret can sink into your DNA, how an almost-love can bury beneath the hollow of your bones, how you can never fully exorcise the demon of your many former selves. How you’re always everything you’ve ever been, all at once. How you can’t escape where you came from; you can only catch up to who you’re meant to be.
I write about ghosts. And I write about love. They are, as Jamie from Bly Manor would say, two sides of the same coin.
Of course, there’s many ways to create horror, and the genre can still be hopeful without making you ugly-cry like a Mike Flanagan Episode 5 (even though that is always my personal, ultimate goal as an author). In many works of horror, you’ll find an abundance of resilience and growth for the protagonist(s). Characters coming into their own and embracing their truest selves. Sometimes for the better, sometimes for the much, much worse. And sometimes you’ll find the greatest outcome of all: living deliciously and enjoying the taste of butter.
But again, some might still wonder, why write horror at all when the world is so bleak?
The answer, I think, is simply because horror can heal.
It can break you and put you back together—and maybe you’re not whole at the end. Maybe no one ever is. Maybe you’re something new and different and changed, just as the characters are. You learn to live without being whole—with a broken heart, with a piece of yourself that’s eternally missing, remembering things once lived that can’t ever be reclaimed. But you survive. And you go forward.
And that’s the hopeful part:
Whatever comes next.
Currently Working On…
Right now, I’m deep in revisions on my WIP, which I’ve dubbed Blood WIP. I zero drafted a messy and chaotic version earlier this spring that’s now being whipped into shape with the help of some notecards pinned to a bulletin board that makes me feel like that Charlie meme. I’m about halfway through Act II, meaning I’m ready to kill all of my characters (if they don’t kill each other first).
Simultaneously, I’ve been working on a secret Halloween project that I’m really excited about. I’ll be able to share more details about it soon, and I can’t wait to tell you all about it.
Behind-the-Scenes…
Below is a tiny snippet from Blood WIP.
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