Books Are Horrifying

At least, I wish more were. In trying to decide what to write about for the latest Slushpile, I pored over Best Of lists (still going strong on the cusp of February!), Top 10s, Reese Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine picks, and the picks of those whom Reese Witherspoon picked for Hello Sunshine.

I am all for getting people to read, but I feel like the chosen ones are all the same. With brightly-colored covers and scribbled font, or bold sans-serif font pressed onto an abstract illustration. Yes, I’m judging books by their covers and I dare you not to do the same.

Unless you consider Michelle Obama’s “Becoming” a work of horror, there are very few books in that genre that get any love in the New York Times’ Bestseller game. Or The New Yorker. I might be punching above my weight, but why? If I want to write a bestseller, it should be a memoir of addiction, a biography on Harry S Truman, or a coming-of-age book where the woman? comes of age in her 40s. Where are the werewolves? Can a woman come of age with the help of a poltergeist? A medium? A sea creature? All three?

“Well, Heather, why don’t you please quit yelling and write your own damn horror novel? And come of age while you’re at it.” Ok, here it goes … “It was a dark and stormy night …”

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