Halloween Haunts: DON’T SELL SHORT HORROR STORIES SHORT
by Paul Lonardo
For me, short stories are a lot like appetizers. They are bite-size, delicious and fulfilling. You can even make a meal out of them. Have you ever gone out to eat with a group of people where each diner would order a different appetizer, and everyone at the table would sample from all the plates to experience an array of savory flavors and tastes? This is exactly what it’s like when I find myself reading either a good collection of tales written by a single author or an open anthology that features short stories written by a variety of authors.
Without giving away my age, when I was a young writer, anthologies and short story collections were abundant, particularly in my genre of choice, horror, and I consumed them like baked popcorn chicken poppers at a chain restaurant.
To further this anthology analogy, every author is like a different restaurant, representing a wide variety of styles and literary tastes that are practically endless. Anthologies like The Years Best Horror Stories were must reads, as were other anthologies that fit a specific theme, such as macabre tales with an old west premise. These books always featured the biggest names in the genre, icons like Stephen King, Charles L. Grant, Richard Matheson, Ramsey Campbell, F. Paul Wilson, and Graham Masterton. However, my favorite books were always the single author collections. One of the things that I liked best about these books was that they often included some of the author’s earliest stories, occasionally including selections that had not been previously published, which I found especially inspirational as a beginning writer. I must also mention that the cover designs of these books had an allure of their own, drawing me in.
There are many short story collections that had an impact on me, but I put five titles above all others and consider them the ones that most influenced my decision to pursue my own path in writing. The first, at least in the order in which I read them, was The Metrognome & Other Stories (Ballantine, 1990) by Alan Dean Foster. I wasn’t aware of Foster or his work at that time, and I have to admit that I have never been a huge science fiction fan beyond the most mainstream books and films, but when I picked up this collection and started reading the first story, I didn’t stop until I got through all fifteen tales, which were a surprising mix of science fiction, fantasy, and horror. The stories were well-crafted, funny, and delightfully offbeat. I even enjoyed the insightful introductory comments that prefaced each story.
Another collection that made an early impression on me was Joe R. Lansdale’s By Bizarre Hands (Avon Books, 1991). And talk about a book cover image that grabs you. This collection contains some truly disturbing and graphic horror, which could be categorized as part of the Splatterpunk subgenre that emerged in the 1980s. Lansdale’s stories are too intriguing and well-written to be dismissed simply because of their gruesome nature and other excesses. For me, this collection delivered from front cover to back cover.
Blue World (Pocket Books, 1990) was a collection of thirteen diverse and imaginative tales from Robert R. McCammon. This collection contained new and reprinted stories which varied in length from ten pages to the feature story that extended more than 150 pages. I found that very interesting, and it opened my eyes to the advantages of the novella. Rather than editing down a story that takes you in a whole different direction and winds up somewhere between a short story and a novel, Blue World helped me to see how a lengthy story that includes full character development with all their requisite background information is more rewarding for the reader than a hollowed-out version of a story. Less can be more, but sometimes more is what is needed. McCammon certainly delivers that in this collection.
A collection that I had to include for the influence its author had on me is The Howling Man (Tom Doherty, 1992) by Charles Beaumont. By this time, I was well aware of Beaumont for all the work he did in film and television, most notably for the iconic TV series, The Twilight Zone, which itself had a significant impact on me from the time I began watching the old reruns. To discover Beaumont’s written works in such a definitive collection was a window into the inventive mind of a man who did just about everything imaginable creatively speaking, including working as a cartoonist, an illustrator and a disc jockey before selling his first short story to Amazing Stories in 1950. This 1992 anthology featured some of his classic short stories, such as “Free Dirt,” “The Hunger,” and of course, “The Howling Man.” It also included five never-before-published stories. The other thing I really liked about this anthology were the introductions made by other seminal voices in the genre, such as Ray Bradbury, Robert Bloch, Harlan Ellison, and Roger Corman. Their tributes to Beaumont, who died much too young, at the of thirty-eight, and his stories, were illuminating.
What personal chronicle of 1980’s horror collection could be complete with mention of Clive Barker’s Books of Blood (Berkley Books, 1984). This series instantly catapulted Barker into the mainstream of modern horror, with Stephen King himself proclaiming Barker the future of the genre. These early stories by Barker probably shaped my writing more than any other at that time. They were visceral and haunting and poignant, stained with as much dark humor as gore. Each original tale was more darkly imaginative than the next, leaving the reader wanting more, and because the stories did not all appear between the covers of just one book, it compelled Barker’s fans to buy each new anthology upon release, which I know I did enthusiastically.
These are just some of the anthologies that inspired me to begin writing my own short fiction, and then eventually book-length fiction as well as nonfiction books.
Enjoy the ride!
Paul Lonardo is a freelance writer and author with numerous titles including both fiction and nonfiction books.
Paul has placed short stories and nonfiction pieces in various genre magazines and ezines. He is a contributing writer for several publications, including Tales from the Moonlit Path and Burial Books. Paul is an HWA member.
His new book, A TIME OF BLOOD AND DYING, is due for release in October 20025. This collection features 22 all new dark fantasy and horror tales. It is his third collection of short fiction published, the others include DARK LITTLE THINGS and THE LEGEND OF LAKE INCUNABULA & Other Fantastic Tales.
Visit Paul’s author website www.thegoblinpitcher.com
