busyIt's hard to scare people if they know what's coming. It's hard to surprise experienced readers because they've seen it already. So you're looking for entrenched frights. That means either hardwired instincts (spiders, severed heads, etc.) or very real threats (loss of loved ones, things currently going wrong in the world).
When I write horror, I like to explore a lot of different things that unsettle people. Insides, meh, I'm a hobby-scientist, been there dissected that. I'm more into things going appallingly wrong and not being very fixable.
"Lifeyears" has some creeptastic imagery. It begins with mad science torture. The main character has a really disturbing talent. Loss of family and culture over deep time is another major theme. The tone is actually rather sweet through much of the poem, but the themes are horror ones.
"The Transformations of Terror" is pure emotional horror. It's a mood piece focused on fear and revulsion about undesired touching, which is not exactly sexual but is presented with very similar description.
A Conflagration of Dragons is technically fantasy, but it deals with a level of onstage destruction that few fantasy series do. Major cities get burned to the ground as more and more dragons emerge, creating huge numbers of refugees. Characters suffer a lot of negative effects from that. The poems often focus on survival, a typical horror theme.
Diminished Expectations has a lot of body horror. The background features war, dystopic cultures, chemical weapons, and exploitation. Those are all real things; I just mixed them up a bit to generate a speculative setting. It's probably the closest I have to a real horror series, although the futuristic aspects qualify it as science fiction.
Tripping into the Future begins with "A One-Way Trip" in which time travel is used as a weapon. This series focuses on loss, isolation, and despair. It's technically dark science fiction. Being alone and hunted are common horror motifs, though.
November 4 2013, 01:36:39 UTC 7 years ago
Well...
November 4 2013, 01:41:25 UTC 7 years ago