Halloween Haunts: THE PERSONAL NATURE OF HORROR

Halloween Haunts: THE PERSONAL NATURE OF HORROR

Halloween Haunts: The Personal Nature of Horror Eugen Bacon   As writers of horror, there are many motivations that spur us to write this kind of fiction. Some, perhaps like Eric LaRocca, there’s a certain glee in unsettling the reader. But in an interview on their book This Skin Was Once Mine and Other Disturbances, he shares that horror is, to him, a form of healing. There’s blood and brutality, the Lovecraftian in cosmic horror. In the horrific is a certain truth: ‘awful things happen to everyone’. This is one reason I write horror—it reflects reality. You have only to…
Coming to a Shelf Near You: Poetry Showcase Volume X

Coming to a Shelf Near You: Poetry Showcase Volume X

Submit your poem here from April 15-May 15. A decade ago, Peter Adam Salomon had an excellent idea. He wanted to recognize horror and dark poetry as a genre. He brought his idea to then president Rocky Woods and the first HWA Poetry Showcase was born. The response from our membership was excellent and the Showcase has been published every year since. Many of us can credit the Showcase with boosting our careers. I'm one of those—my first professional sale as a poet was to Peter for Volume II. Were it not for his encouragement, I wouldn't be here now.…

Black Heritage in Horror: Interview with Eugen Bacon

Eugen Bacon MA, MSc, PhD is an African Australian author of several novels and fiction collections. She’s a 2022 World Fantasy Award finalist, and was announced in the honor list of the 2022 Otherwise Fellowships for ‘doing exciting work in gender and speculative fiction’. Recent books: Mage of Fools (novel), Chasing Whispers (collection), and An Earnest Blackness (essays). Eugen has two novels, a novella, and two anthologies (ed) out in 2023, and the US release of Danged Black Thing. Visit her website at eugenbacon.com and Twitter feed at @EugenBacon What inspired you to start writing? I have always been enthralled with stories—my imagination is hyper. My father was…