If You Love It, Let It Go.

My friend and fellow traveller in writing, Gitte Christensen, wrote a blogpost this week about what it can be like to be a writer of speculative fiction.

Maybe it's because I came to writing quite a bit later than most, but my experience has been a little different. I don't think I've ever made excuses for writing SF, or tried to fudge the genre too much.

There are a couple of reasons for this - the first being that I write across a couple of genres. My first published story, in a horror anthology, is not considered horror by many people. Most see it as a paranormal romance. I guess it doesn't matter how much the walls of pigeonholes are blurred (or completely bent) these days, speculative fiction is still considered speculative fiction. And I guess that's what I mostly write.

Yes, I've been caught in those conversations with people who declare they loved The Road, or Avatar, or The Matrix, and then tell you in the next breath they don't like watching SF. And yes, I spend time pointing out that SF is more than just robots and spaceships.

I'm almost certain I don't consider writing SF as an elite pastime. Within the SF community I've found both writers and fans to mostly be extremely inclusive and encouraging. Outside the community I've found most readers to find my work accessible. Whether they read it or not is another matter.

As a teacher at High School, teaching mainstream English and a writing course, I've generally found it to be evidence of credibility among my students. Of course teenagers don't have the same issues with genre that adults have.

It's about time we stepped off the back foot, stop being apologetic for what we love, and allow our genre to spread beyond the confines we often place around it.

Experiencing Horror.

A few days ago it occurred to me that I've had my fair share of horror in my life. No longterm horror, living through war, abuse, disease or anything like that, but enough small individual experiences and moments that all make great fodder for writing.

Let me explain and give a few examples.

As a youngster, I sometimes used to go and spend weekends with my Grandparents. Now while most Grandparents lived in regular houses with yards, my Grandparents didn't. They were live in caretakers at the Royal College of Surgeons. Which meant that we had long hallways, labs and lecture theatres to play in. And, of course, the museum.

Looking back, it's a wonder I wasn't scarred (or scared) by wandering through glass cases exhibiting real body parts, often with cut-aways to reveal muscle, bones and organs. I even remember walking into one of the labs one day where a cadaver was laid on the autopsy table in a clear bag. I believe that's one occasion when I ran out immedately.

And yes, now, as an adult, it seems strange a body was left on the table overnight. (I do recall the room was chilled - or maybe that was just me!)

As I said, all good writing fodder.

Later, as a police officer, I've faced even more horror. I've held a month old baby in my arms that was completely blue and cold, I held a man in my arms, seated in his blood pouring from a gunshot wound, and watched him die. I performed CPR on the victim of a motorcycle accident who had half his leg missing. I've knocked on doors and asked to speak with family members after fatal accidents. I've faced people armed with knives and sawn-off shotguns. I've talked a man out of cutting himself any further, and taken people into mental institutions because they were no longer coping in the real world.

Of course there's more, and some of this is just the obvious stuff.

We all face horror in our lives, and it's all a matter of degrees. I've seen people in much worse situations than I've ever been in. And there are others I've merely read about who have faced horrors of the most unimaginable kinds.

But those moments, of dealing with people, speaking to others living in different realities to mine. It truly is an amazing life experience to have had.

And I consider myself most fortunate.

Wow, What's That Splinter In Your Eye?

For many years I've told people that I don't particularly like horror. I don't read it and don't watch horror films. A couple of years ago someone lent me a Stephen King book and told me I had to read it, and although I enjoyed it (and he does write great dialogue), it didn't thrill me. So I find it rather ironic that my first publication will be in a horror anthology.

I didn't mean for it to happen like that. It happened by accident. You see, I tend to write SF - although I've written a couple of stories that were slightly supernatural based. In fact one of them, a ghost story, I didn't consider to be horror at all - but it did seem to fit into the Festive Fear format. And so before I submitted it to Tasmaniac, I e-mailed and queried to ensure I wasn't wasting the publisher's time. What I've slowly come to realise over the past six months is that my definition of horror was all wrong.  All the time I was telling people I didn't like horror, I was actually reading a lot of it.

One day I suddenly realised half the Twilight Zone and X-Files shows I've seen are horror and, of course, Buffy spends all her time battling demons and vampires. As for all those Jonathan Carroll books I've been reading and loving for 25 years? Turns out they're horror. (I just figured they were weird fantasy with a dark edge.)

I've just finished reading a few anthologies of horror stories - and most of them turned out to be not what I expected. What I realised I meant is I don't like the blood and gore horror - slasher stuff. And although I'm still not huge on the evil supernatural horror, one of my best friends has been working on me, making me watch old Hammer Horror films with him. Yeah, I know - they're pretty lame by modern standards, but it's a start.

So here I was accusing people of pigeonholing genre, saying they don't like SF while praising Avatar and so on - only to find I was doing it myself.

I promise to be more open to different genres from now on, OK? (Mills & Boon is still out, though!)

The Horror, The Horror...

My wife and I had dinner with a close friend last night. He was, as always, a wonderful host. Not only did he prepare a delicious lamb dinner and kept our wine topped up (very important), but he planned an evening of DVD entertainment as well.

We held our regular discussion on football and the current state of the AFL. This basically consisted of us both agreeing that Hardwick was a good choice of coach for Richmond and that the umpiring in the Essendon - Hawthorn game was extremely poor. We then returned to our oft repeated attempts to understand the wacky and zany plans Andrew Demetriou dreams up for our beloved game while hiding under his desk. Like adding new teams to an already crowded league (and thereby diluting our talent more), increasing the finals to include the top 10 teams (thereby rewarding mediocrity), ignoring the tanking that occurs (thereby being the only person in the country that can't see it happening), and pushing for a fixture that is only set until round 17, with games after that to be based on ladder positions. Yeah, that guy is really in touch with what the fans want.

Then we went through to the living room to watch an old Hammer vampire film.

My friend is a film buff. He especially loves his old horror films. At one point in the evening our topic of conversation turned to horror. Recently, I wrote a ghost story which my friend has read. I told him I was considering submitting it to a horror market. He seemed surprised by this as he hadn't considered it to be a 'horror' story. And I suppose by certain definitions of horror, it probably isn't.

I tried to ask someone in the writing world if it was a horror story, and they told me that if it contained ghosts then it's dark fantasy. Is that right? It's not particularly scary, but it does have death, it has a ghost and it has a haunting. It's a gentle ghost story.

Is it horror? Would a horror market accept it? I'll send it off and we'll see what happens. If it sells, then I guess it is. I'll keep you informed.

In the meantime keep an eye on what Demetriou attempts to do to football. That's a real horror story.