Into the Obscuradrome Issue 5
Hello. I’m Bob Pastorella, co-host of the This Is Horror podcast, website manager for This Is Horror, and writer. I’m the author of Mojo Rising, They’re Watching (with Michael David Wilson), and have numerous short-stories and non-fiction online and in print in various publications.
Hello. I’m Bob Pastorella, co-host of the This Is Horror podcast, website manager for This Is Horror, and writer. I’m the author of Mojo Rising, They’re Watching (with Michael David Wilson), and have numerous short-stories and non-fiction online and in print in various publications.
Previous newsletters can be found here.
Updates:
The Small Hours is done. Weighing in a little over 40K words, it certainly falls in novel-length category by most genre standards. I expect more cuts and edits in the future, and I do have it out to a publisher as well as a few beta readers for feedback. My little Fright Night meets Suicide Kings vampire novel has a massive Easter Egg running through it, one which I’m reluctant to talk about until I get more feedback. I’ve written the novel in such a way that only those familiar with the inspiration would probably realize it … and it also works quite well without any foreknowledge. One beta reader noticed it immediately, another didn’t realize it until after I told her. Once I get a consensus on it, I’ll decide how to market the book.
I’m very proud of this book, and I’m really hoping it resonates with readers once it’s out in the world. I also think it would make one helluva kickass movie. The cast is young and vibrant, the villains nasty and violent, and there’s laughs and gore galore.
I’ll be working on my next book, Untitled Grindhouse Novel (not actual title) soon. This one is John Wick meets The Autopsy of Jane Doe. Two ex-con kidnappers accidentally kill their victim, unleashing the rage of their boss, who desperately needed the victim alive, as well as the victim they killed.
The only thing worse than accidentally killing the woman you kidnapped is having to deal with her when she comes back alive to get revenge.
With the exception of the main character—the aforementioned victim—the rest of the cast of this novel is over the age of fifty years. Why? Because we constantly see mainstream entertainment flock to the youngest and brightest working today, while older characters, and the actors that portray them on the screen, rarely get a glance. I’m fifty-four years old, so yeah … I’ve been around the block a couple of times. I’ve been in the horror community long enough, and experienced the business side of things from the way-back-when-days through today to know the only consistent thing is change. I may be old, but I can roll with the changes, and I’m just getting warmed up. People of all ages and walks of life experience horror … not just the kids taking a dare to stay overnight in the creepy abandoned house at the end of the block. I’m not saying let’s stop writing stories about kids, but I am saying don’t count out older characters because you think they might have one foot in the grave. There are plenty of older folks, men and woman, that are experienced and seasoned and can handle themselves in any given situation.
They all have stories.
It’s Right Next to You
Horror Adjacent.
This term pops up a lot in conversation. I’m guilty of using it, very recently in fact. Lately, I’ve been wondering if it’s an unnecessary term. Usually it’s mentioned in conversations about psychopathic killers, but it pops up in other places as well. A murder mystery with supernatural undertones, or dealing with cults, or even the occult. For ‘horror adjacent’ to get any kind of traction, it is usually mentioned in combination with another genre, like a western with supernatural undertones. Pale Rider is an excellent example of this. Preacher is supposed to represent Death. Blood Meridian is another, as there’s a strong argument that Judge Holden is the devil, or a demon, or some other embodiment of evil. But hey, sometimes the blue curtains are simply blue curtains. We each find something different in the stories, our own experiences and feelings temper the shape of the characters, and usually there’s a way of looking at things that shines a little light on how such characters can ring true in ways we didn’t expect.
Nothing wrong with a little ambiguity.
Except when we call such stories as Blood Meridian ‘horror adjacent’, we are eliminating the possibility of ambiguity. We’re taking a stance, accepting the metaphorical as reality. We still insist we can see the ghosts. At that point, saying such stories are adjacent to horror is doing an incredible disservice to horror fiction, and frankly the genre gets kicked to the curb too often anyway, no sense in helping it out.
And it’s always a horror ‘undertone’. Where does that fall on the sliding scale of being able to call something horror? Go too far in one direction and suddenly it’s not a horror ‘undertone’ but perhaps a ‘hint’ of horror? A smidge?
Of course, much of this slips into defining horror fiction, which has defied competent definitions for centuries. As an emotion, horror is easily defined. When it becomes fiction, that’s where the blur comes into play. As much as we’d like to think that all supernatural stories are horror fiction, they are not. Obviously, there’s a lot of overlap, much of which falls on tone, but the paranormal and supernatural are just small factions of the speculative genres. When you look at Pale Rider through that lens, there’s definitely horror, but much of it is of the human horror variety.
When the story deals with cults, there’s a different fear at play. Rational people know cults probably aren’t something you’d like to get involved with. It’s probably all the brain-washing and mass suicide. Cults give people the heebie jeebies … ergo … horror adjacent. There are enough real horror stories about people who fell in with dangerous cults, so the fear is real, and can be extremely disturbing and horrifying for many readers. Nothing supernatural here, just a group of people following conspiracy theories to their unnatural conclusions.
What about the occult. Okay, now we’re getting a little closer. The story doesn’t even have to be supernatural. Just mention ‘the occult’ and BAM, the buzz word fills our imagination with figures in black worshiping some evil deity. The main fear here is sacrifice, as in ritualistic human sacrifice. You really don’t need anything supernatural to occur once we get to the sacrifice level. Murder is scary no matter how you slice it, but when it’s from a razor-sharp blade striking your heart while strapped to a stone altar, surrounded by nude (but robed) people from all walks of life chanting “Hail Satan”, you really don’t give a fuck if they can actually conjure Satan to this plane of existence or not. That shit is scary, and may be the best example of ‘horror adjacent’ yet.
HBO’s True Detective, Season One, falls into this category. Nothing actually supernatural happens, but we find ourselves in cultish/occult territory. Combined with the true crime aspects of the story, that season in particular hits several of the ‘horror adjacent’ buttons all at once, which brings me to my final point.
True Crime is probably the closest we can get to true ‘horror adjacent’ content. The thing that makes it so scary is that it happens to people just like us. Normal folks going through their lives in the wrong place at the wrong time. Any of us could be the victim of a True Crime. Experiencing True Crime stories is as close as we can get to the horror with the comfort of a safety net, therefore it is the epitome of horror adjacent. But don’t tell that to the survivors of such horrendous acts of violence. There’s nothing ‘adjacent’ to what they went through, that’s real horror, and we’re just not meant to handle that kind of trauma unscathed.
If there’s a point to be made, it’s that ‘horror adjacent’ terminology really isn’t doing horror fiction any justice. It’s a disservice to a genre that already has to fight tooth and nail for any form of legitimacy. If the story has even the slightest smidge of horror, a horror over or under ‘tone’, then by all means let’s include it in the horror section. ‘Elevated horror’ allowed snobby critics a chance to say they enjoyed a horror film or book, but at the end of the day it’s still horror. It’s the same with ‘horror adjacent’ … it’s still all Horror.
Music: All Hail the Yeti, Kanaan, Stonewall Noise Orchestra, Rob Zombie, Judas Priest.
Films: The Medium, The Antenna.
Books: Poe For Your Problems by Catherine Baab-Muguira, Dead Set by Richard Kadrey, and still The Club Dumas by Arturo Pérez-Reverte (again).
Next Issue: who knows? I’m sure something will set me off within the next couple of weeks.
peace&love
Bob.
peace&love
Bob