I've already yelled abt it in dms but the mcmansion story was sO good, it had the same chilling, unnerving energies as an episode of TMA or Night Gallery. Your horror is the best in the sense that it doesn't grab you urgently with hooked claws like a slasher or via a jump scare like a haunting. No, yours is a rising action of surrealism and uneasiness that grows in your gut and then, in the final blink, we see the apparition and pray it was a trick of the mind as we close the book cover. 11/10
thank u so much!! and thank u for the opportunity to talk about what i consider effective horror :DĀ
iāve always been more interested in surreal horror rather than gore/splattercore and ESPECIALLY how horror can tie into architecture... the idea that Places Can Go Wrong is so thrilling to me, because itās less about seeing a monster and more about the tingling sensations of being watched or an unnerving sensation in the air. iāve always been drawn to stories of the unknown, where there may or may not be a monster around the corner. the tension, the build-up, thatās where truly effective horror lives. i think the more you define The Horror, be it a monster or surreal architecture, the sharper its outline becomes and the less terrifying it becomes - if you can name it, you get used to it, and if you can see it you can assign it concepts and definitions and outlines and ground it. a floorboard creaking in the dark hallway beyond your room is terrifying because of the potentialĀ horror it holds. which is why shirley jacksonās haunting of hill houseĀ opening paragraph is one of my ABSOLUTE favorite bits of horror writing:
No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality;Ā even larks and katydidsĀ are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane,Ā stood by itself against the hills,Ā holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.
the feedback iāve gotten for A GLASS OF WATER is exactly what i wanted to hear: that the terror of the story comes from the possibilityĀ of the fleeting glimpse of a shadow, that maybe the character was making it up or seeing things - but maybe she wasnāt.
and i canāt wait to write more in that vein!
