Women in Horror Month: The Haunting of Hill House

Title: The Haunting of Hill House
Author: Shirley Jackson
Publisher: Penguin

“The literary effect we call horror turns on the dissolution of boundaries, between the living and the dead, of course, but also, at the crudest level, between the outside of the body and everything that ought to stay inside.”

-Laura Miller (from the introduction to The Haunting of Hill House)

To be perfectly honest, Laura Miller’s introduction will say everything about this book I wish to say and in a more elegant way. Though, unless you don’t mind spoilers, I wouldn’t read it until you read The Haunting of Hill House.

So where should I start? Madness? Ghosts?

Ecto Bits with Scott A. Johnson

Novels, short stories, articles, non-fiction books, Scott A. Johnson does it all. From zombies to demons, he writes it all and writes it well. As both a teacher and mentor in the Seton Hill Writing Popular Fiction program, he helps the next generation of horror writers learn the chops of creating effective, engaging stories. So let’s see what he has to say about realism, literary merit, ghosts, and the ever popular zombie.