People wonder why genre fiction has increased its audience so much in recent years. It seems evident to me that literary fiction in the main has given up on story and it ceases to be about anything and is usually about itself...genre fiction...has always been about story." Lawrence Block

Block is my writing god. I like his "If it works, it works, stop fretting over it" attitude.

Also, Christopher Pike books gave me far more nights when I had to sleep with the light on.

Bing bing bing! Perfect adolescent gut reaction. "Dude - he SCARED me!"

I'm betting Pike did that, for P-C.

I'm betting Pike did that, for P-C.

I don't remember how often I was truly scared. I don't often get scared by books. There may have been a creep factor, though, and some of his were more mysteries than horror anyway.

I do love my discovery of Pike, though. It went like this.

In sixth grade, there was a book the chalkboard. Apparently, it had been lost, and it was left there for its owner to claim. Bury Me Deep, by Christopher Pike. The cover had a skeleton hand coming out of the ground, and the description on the back looked interesting. After a couple days went by with no one claiming it, I, uh, took it home and read it. I really liked it (not that it was his best or anything, but your first always holds a special place in your heart). When I returned it to the chalkboard the next day or so, I discovered its owner. He told me I could keep it. And thus my Pike-love was born.

My Stine story is that I tried to steal money from the big change bottle in our closet to buy Monster Blood from the book order.

'Salem's Lot creeped me out seriously. The kid laying in the upstairs room waiting for sunset, trying to get the ropes untied, then hearing the unhurried footsteps on the stairs. He's almost free when the door opens, and he knows if he turns to look he'll die.

Gah, I shivered just remembering it.

First horror book I remember reading was Shirley Jackson, Haunting of Hill House. I was about eleven. That's reading on my own, mind you; my evil family used to read me to sleep with Saki, Poe and Lovecraft.

Explains a few things....

'Salem's Lot creeped me out seriously.

My husband read 'Salem's Lot first, and for several nights he kept reading after I fell asleep, occasionally waking me up by saying, "Oh, shit!" I, of course, had to read it after that. I finished the book at about 3 a.m., and I really did get up and go to the refrigerator to make sure we had garlic in the house. Ah, Stephen King back when he was edited.

The first thing I remember really scaring me was a cheesy movie, "Journey to the Seventh Planet." My parents never took us to movies, and a girl in third or fourth grade took us all to the movies for her birthday.

The first book I remember actually terrifying me into staying up all night to read it? The Exorcist. Brrrrrr. Nothing before that, I didn't scare easily.

First horror book I remember reading was Shirley Jackson, Haunting of Hill House. I was about eleven. That's reading on my own, mind you; my evil family used to read me to sleep with Saki, Poe and Lovecraft. Explains a few things....

Ha! It certainly does. FWIW, Hill House is a genuinely creepy book, and so well done and every time I read it (invariably at night in a quiet apartment) it gives me the willies. I love it. I developed a “The Supernatural in Literature” unit that I can’t WAIT to get a teaching job so I can use it. Hill House is the only novel in it. The first paragraph in that book is just a damn wonderful example of writing in and of itself – I love it:

No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.

EDIT This site has a great essay on Jackson, and also provided me with my first pic and description of her.

[link]

The pic reminds me of me, with the glasses and the cig. I wonder if we're related!

I developed a “The Supernatural in Literature” unit that I can’t WAIT to get a teaching job so I can use it.

Neeeaat. I read 'Salem's Lot for a class on The Gothic in American Fiction.

This is what I have for that unit, although I'll probably add/delete stuff as time goes by:

Materials and resources: "Danse Macabre" by Stephen King

"The Fall of the House of Usher" from "Edgar Allan Poe Audio Collection" read by Vincent Price and Basil Rathbone