Happy Halloween: Why I Don't Write Horror

As a kid, I was really into writing horror with dramatic elements. And when I say "kid," I mean it. Let me explain.

I've been told I was an early reader. Teaching me phonics was unnecessary. My mom discovered I had sight words at 2 years old. My older brother learning to read and my mother reading to us every night made me pick it up instantly.

Fast forward. I consumed everything interesting to me by the time I was eight. I read ahead, four years or more at that age. I disliked the "YA" books they had in the late 80s. Sweet Valley High and Babysitters Club. I was over those by the time I was nine. I enjoyed action-packed movies and real-life drama. My parents owned a video store, so I got to see more things than some allow kids today (minus sexuality, of course). A child of Stephen King's era, I gravitated toward the thrill and shock of horror. King and Saul were my cup of tea as a preteen. 

It was only natural I would want to write what I was reading. But horror didn't stick, and I shifted to young adult romance as a teen, writing the exact books that had been lacking in the 90s. Now, there are tons of these books I had wanted thanks to Twilight and other early 2000 books that shook things up. 

I digress. Why did I give up on horror? I terrified myself.

I had nightmares and was even scared while awake from the things I wrote, particularly ghosts and vampires. My imagination is incredible and limitless, always on. Yes, this is bragging but this is the praise I commonly get from readers and critique partners, so I'm owning it. 

Take the above picture. I came downstairs to this, my kid upstairs asleep. As I crept closer, my imagination played out me uncovering it to nothing being there, a ghost, to an eerie changeling who looked like a creepy demonic version of my own child. In reality, my pulse was rising as I uncovered two couch pillows that happened to be covered that way by happenstance. 

This is just an everyday occurrence. Pointing my imagination toward horrific bloodshed and horrid creatures purposely and for hours? I can't do it. Perhaps life being full of hardships also affects my ability to handle horror. In any case, I seek to read and write those happy-ever-afters rather than blood, guts, and gore. I'll leave the horror genre to those who rock at it. I might dabble in some ghost lore but that is probably where I have to draw the line so I can sleep at night.

Happy Halloween.