Am I a real horror writer? 🦇👻🧛♂️
+ an exclusive spooky snippet from my gothic historical fantasy book...
March is #womeninhorrormonth in addition to Women’s History Month (and that’s why the Substack site preview image for this newsletter is Kate Siegel, one of my favorite women in the creative horror space 🖤). I’ve personally been consuming a lot of horror media in the last two weeks while I rested and recovered from COVID (why I chose to make myself scared/anxious when I should have been resting and not being stressed is beyond me 😂 but it was also fun!) and every time I’ve seen a hashtag or thread celebrating women creators in horror, I’ve happily joined in and talked about the book and short stories I’ve been working on…but sometimes I wonder…
Am I really a horror writer?
While I have written horror short stories and plan to write more books that drift a little more into classic horror story territory than the book I’m querying, I think my own self doubt over whether I’m a “real” horror writer comes from the fact that the book I’m querying is actually a cross of multiple genres. It almost feels like I can’t call it a horror book because it’s not as terrifying, bloody, or focused on making my readers feel anxious/scared as books that can confidently state Horror as their main genre. And often when I see people talk about Gothic Horror in the book space, usually they refer to books about hauntings or the ‘woman is trapped in a house in a horrific situation’ trope—which doesn’t fully encompass the genre, and so many classic gothic horror books that birthed this genre were adventurous, suspenseful, magical, and paranormal beyond the scope of ghosts and psychopaths.
But because my book is light on hauntings and possession, and the horror is more thrilling and adventurous rather than aiming to give readers a sense of dread throughout the story… I ask myself, “Should I really be marketing this book as historical fantasy crossed with gothic horror?”
But then I feel silly asking myself that when I remember that my book comps very closely to Castlevania, Penny Dreadful, The Witcher, and other historical fiction books that are blended with monster horror—and it’s like DUH, you have vampires, ghosts, werewolves, and frightening scenes—including an entire section in Hell. So yes, this book and your writing in it does count as horror—even if it’s not the only genre you’re working with, much like these other pieces of media your book comps to.
I think another element that contributed to not feeling sure whether my book could be considered horror is that when I query using forms, I can only choose one genre for my book—so I almost always choose Fantasy because the mythological and supernatural aspects of my book feel closer to Fantasy, and it is more accurate of a first impression to give an agent than if I categorized the book as only ‘Historical Fiction’ or ‘Horror.’ (But I did recently query it as Horror because that was the only genre the agent was accepting, even if she didn’t mind it being blended with fantasy—because that was the only option on the pull-down)
Now, the funny thing is even with all this self-doubt about whether I can call myself a horror writer/if my book counts as part of the horror genre…sometimes I also feel like my book is TOO much of a horror novel for some agents 😂
When I look at certain agents’ profiles and read they don’t want any element of horror in their MSWL, or they’ll put “Horror” on their list and then at the tail end of their anti-MSWL wishlist, they put “no blood, gore, anything too scary” etc. I think “Wow, is my book too hardcore/too scary for this agent because of the bloody demon-slaying scenes? Does my book count as a horror book then?”
It’s simply confusing, feeling both like I’m not enough and too much of a horror writer at the same time…
But at the end of the day, I know that I am someone who loves the horror genre—even if I like my horror more adventurous, sad, and/or focused on emotional trauma rather than slashers, monster/demon tales that center on the slaughter/terror of a community, or stories that aim to make the audience feel unsettled, anxious, or disgusted the entire time. So even when I mix horror with fantasy, and even when I write about ghosts in a story that’s really about losing touch with life after heartbreak, my more adventurous and soft horror is STILL horror.
So I’m going to answer my own question confidently now:
Yes, I am a real horror writer.
(By the way, no one has ever directly challenged the notion of me being a horror writer—this is my own self doubt I’m arguing against ❤ Although, since I was planning to share a spooky writing snippet for this weekend’s newsletter…I felt like I should take the time to address this part of my writing identity that I haven’t been so confident about…until now 😊)
So without further ado, here’s a spooky Substack-exclusive writing excerpt from my gothic historical fantasy book 👻 This snippet is from the first demon-hunting adventure my main group in the book goes on together after they all team up, and this chapter is written in the POV of our ghost-hunting professional, Brennan, who has the ability to see ghosts—something that not even my demi-god protagonist Ehren is capable of…
[writing snippet has been deleted and is now only available in subscribers’ inboxes if they had been subscribing at the time the post was published]
I hope you enjoyed that spooky snippet!
Thanks again for subscribing and for all your continued support. Have a great weekend ❤
-Jazmin