Women in Horror: Part Thirteen
Here we are at lucky number thirteen of WiHM!
Today we’re joined by author Kami Garcia & she’s telling all about the reactions she faced when she announced that she was going to write horror fiction…
Why would you ever want to write a horror novel?—that was the question people kept asking when my solo novel, Unbreakable, released last Fall. The same people who had never questioned my choice of genre when I was writing Southern Gothic were suddenly thrown by the word horror. They associated it with violence and gore, instead of the elements at the heart of every great horror novel—tension and suspense.
Even if I ignored their limited definition of the genre and resisted the urge to pull out my soapbox, I realized what they were really saying: Why would a woman want to write a horror novel? (This realization may have dawned on me after two different people came right out and told me that “women don’t write horror novels.”) It was a confusing (okay, rage-inducing) statement for a self-professed geek dark fantasy like me, who displays a piece of Darth Vader’s cape and a replica of Buffy’s stake in my house. It was as if they were saying women shouldn’t wear pants, or serve in the military, or watch The Walking Dead.
I argued that women are uniquely prepared to write horror (and survive a zombie apocalypse). We are the definition of “by any means necessary.” In college, I stitched up a friend’s arm in my bathroom the old school way—using a needle and thread. When my brother’s eyeball was dangling by the nerve, my stepmother shoved it back into the socket and held it in place while she drove him to the hospital. Then there’s childbirth (yes, I’m going there). After describing my pregnancy and C-section to one of my best friends who didn’t have kids, he related on a classic horror fan level. “So the baby eats all your food, pokes at you from the inside, and then someone cuts your stomach open and pulls it out? It’s like that scene in the movie Alien.” Exactly.
Horror novels hooked me in elementary school, with a little help from Stephen King’s Cujo. The image of a mother and her son trapped in a hot car while their rabid Saint Bernard stalked them outside was terrifying and addictive. With every page, the car grew hotter, the dog more feral, and the situation more desperate. After I finished the book, I didn’t let my dog sleep in my room for a week; and, o this day, I obsessively track the date of my dog’s last rabies shot. Then I fell in love with Anne Rice, who created a world in which the unreal existed—and threw decadent parties in New Orleans. I’d love to hear someone tell Anne Rice that women don’t write horror. Or Gillian Flynn, an author whose novels push the boundaries of darkness into pitch-black territory. I bet she wears pants and watches The Walking Dead while she writes them.
Kami Garcia is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of UNBREAKABLE (The Legion Series, Book 1) & coauthor of the Beautiful Creatures Novels and the spin-off, DANGEROUS CREATURES (May 2014). She lives in Maryland with her family, and their dogs Spike and Oz (named after characters from the TV show Buffy the Vampire Slayer). Learn more at: www.kamigarcia.com & www.thelegionseries.com, and follow her on Twitter @kamigarcia.
