Authors Electric

Sometimes I feel like I don’t quite belong to the horror writing crowd. Sure, I call my work ‘horror’ because it’s the most convenient label for it (‘Speculative fiction’ is a bit of an umbrella term and does tend to get me looks of slight derision) but ‘horror’ is very broad. Almost too broad, as anyone attempting to compare say, H.P. Lovecraft, M.R. James and Dean Koontz against one another might find. Any slasher-movie fans reading my work would probably be quite disappointed - there’s no blood, or guts, or… well, horror , really. So I struggle to define it. Then I came across the term ‘fridge horror’. It’s from the marvellous TV Tropes website , where I can spend hours poring over the often hilarious descriptions of character, plot and genre tropes that can be applied to all stories - written or televised - everywhere. It’s kind of nice. It reminds you that, far from it just being you as an author who keeps coming up with ideas that have already been done, there are no new id...

STUART HILL. THIRD BLOG. Well it’s October, the month of Halloween and all things thpooky (I’m sorry, something always compels me to say ‘spooky’ that way; I don’t know why.) Anyway, to resume: October, Halloween and things-that-go-bump-in-the-night: I’ve been fascinated by ghosts and the paranormal for as long as I can remember. Whether in book form, on TV or film. As a kid, Dr Who never bothered me, unlike all my friends; science fiction horror left me completely untouched, still does. But give me a haunted house, or an unquiet spirit and I’ve got my place booked behind the sofa. There’s something completely delicious about the very idea of a revenant that no amount of aliens or mad scientists can touch. The fact that my first e-book is a collection of ghost stories is definitely no coincidence. I’ve been writing them for years, and in fact use them as a sort of exercise to get the literary juices flowing again if I’ve not been writing for a while. Actually, I’ve been wondering what ...