Juicy Quickfire with Scott Nicholson

If you’ve caught on to the e-book movement and haven’t come across Scott Nicholson, you are doing something wrong. While having written many great horror novels like They Hunger or The Red Church, he is has many other stories and novels that cover the whole spectrum of literature. With his latest thriller, Liquid Fear, coming out this Friday, we asked Scott to give us his viewpoints on Horror, the supernatural, and their confluence with other audiences and genres.

A Few Announcments

Well, this week would have been where I would post up the quarterly result of the survey. But there hasn’t be a significant number of new answers for it to have changed the results. So we are going to change things around a bit in hopes to get this cause revitalized.

1. The survey will be open till the end of the year. We will post the final results on January 1st, 2012: While traffic is good, we still don’t have a good ratio of people clicking the Survey button when they are here. So the plan of quarterly results is a little ambitious right now.
2. With the results, there will be a new revised survey posted.: There are some flaws that we want to fix to get a more accurate result. Many we wouldn’t have seen till we put the current survey out. We will be watching any results throughout the year to fine tune the next version.
3. More social media presence.: Our only presence outside of the site is our Twitter. But the world can’t be ruled by Twitter alone. Recently, we created a Goodreads account to post teasers of out Book Spotlights. Please friend us there to stay up to them. We have not yet settled a Facebook presence, but it is in the cards. Check back often to see what we decide.
4. Opening it up to everyone.: We have a new page called, “What Have You Found?” Here you can tell the world about anything that has had any kind of impact on your views about Horror fiction. Whether it’s a book, author, website, cause, anything, tell us about it. There is the added benefit that your entry could be chosen to be a Changing the Face of Horror or Book Spotlight post. If so you will be credited at the top of the post along with your comment.

Those are our plans for now. Come back soon!

The Trial by Franz Kafka

Title: The Trial
Author: Franz Kafka
Publisher: Various

I’m sure that those not haven’t read much horror are surprised by this Spotlight. Kafka has influenced much of the literary world. But to say that a story of his is a horror story, I’m sure there are few trying to hold back the “blasphemous.” And I’m not that surprised. I bet there are even those that would say “The Metamorphosis” is more horror than The Trial. And then I would remind those people that for a very long time, horror was as much about psychological horror as it was supernatural, which seems to have more of a dominating stance these days.

Atmospheric horror is a tradition that has been around for a long time, but it could be said it got a boost from H.P. Lovecraft and his Cthulhu Mythos. Even now, writers look to him to figure out how to create a world that permeates the fears they want to invoke. Doing this forms a setting for a story where you never know what is around the next corner, or in the shadows, or behind the closed door. It is the most effective methods of Horror, which is why The Trial has found its way here. Kafka, a decade or so before Lovecraft, created a tale that was quintessential atmospheric horror.

Through out this story, Josef K. is haunted by the mysterious Court and Law. First thought of as actual entities, Court and Law soon become ever present forces in K.’s life. Their minions show up where ever they want. They can completely alter the life of those they wish. And fighting them seems to be a Sisyphean task. In some ways, it is more effective than most uses of atmospheric horror. As many draw from Lovecraft, his atmospheric horror is more of a cosmic horror (i.e. The malevolence is so grande and beyond comprehension that it more about the unknown that is terrifying) where Kafka’s horror is completely within our understanding. The idea that the you can be accused of crime, never being told what that crime is, not seeing the evidence of that crime to defend yourself, is one that has happened through out history. You can’t read this book and not feel the same suffocation K. Feels as the power of the Court bear down on him, because we have all had moment or will have a moment just like that.

The Trial is just the first example of how horror exists outside the Horror genre. Proof that even if you don’t read Horror book, you most likely have read Horror stories.

Horror Reading Level: Beginner