It helps readers identify with their problems. It also helps ground the supernatural events that follow in a recognizable reality and perhaps gives some of my wilder scenarios a little verisimilitude.
Most people are middle class. Most people do wish their lives were better than they are. And I think by making my main characters ordinary, average guys.
There’s always been a need for horror fiction, though – ghost stories have been a staple of every human society since the beginning of recorded literature – and while commercially the field may have its ups and downs, it will never go away.
Hope was a dangerous emotion that more often than not led men into foolishness and peril, made them risk their lives and lose their wives and part with fortunes that they never recovered.
As far as I’m concerned, those wussboys should sever all ties with the horror community if that’s the way they feel and get out of the way so real horror writers can do their work.
Two years later I finally sold it. For a whopping $4,000. A year after that, it finally came out. Which explains why there are all those terrible jobs on my resume!
I would waste countless hours looking up things about myself, writing fake posts about how great I am and arguing with people who don’t like my work. It saves me a lot of time and frustration to just stay out of the loop.
There were shadows galore in the dim light, but there was one shadow that did not correspond to any object in the room. It lurked next to the fireplace, a formless, undulating darkness.
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