So How Did I Get Here Anyway?

I feel compelled to answer my own version of R. B. Payne's question from his earlier post on June 27, 2009: "Why horror?" For me, though, it wasn't other people asking me this; rather it was a question I asked myself.

While my friend R. B. was busy with his science fiction, I had my nose deep into crime fiction. The darker, more hard-boiled it was, the better. Even true crime caught my attention frequently enough. But never once did I think I would be writing within the realm of horror. In fact the very first novel I wrote was a crime novel. Come to think of it, the whole thing was a crime in and of itself, something I filed away deep into a box somewhere hoping never to see it again, yet unable to completely cast away the noble effort it took for me to write it.

It actually wasn't until my early adulthood that I was introduced to horror in any and all media. But when I started reading tales of the supernatural, dark fantasy, speculative fiction, non-gore horror, I found a world that I absolutely loved. To me, there was nothing more mysterious, not even a crime or mystery novel, than these sub-genres of "what-if" horror.

Funny thing is, my husband was the one whom we always expected to be published on the horror front. Yet he chose to set his horrors within the framework of a crime novel (An Occasional Dream) and was fortunate to be published by the wonderful gents, Jim Pascoe and Tom Fassbender, at UglyTown, a crime fiction publisher who has since, unfortunately, closed its doors.

So, the horror writer all of a sudden became a crime writer (though not for long as horror will always circulate through his veins), and the crime writer all of a sudden became a horror writer (where she will most likely stay).

And they lived happily ever after.