Horror List Book Review: Stepford Wives

I'm reading through three lists of best horror with two friends (DeAnna Knippling and M.B. Partlow), posting reviews as we go. (For more information, including a list of the books, see this post.)

This week I'm reviewing Stepford Wives, by Ira Levin.

This is one that we all probably know the story of, whether we've read it, watched one of the movie versions, or none of the above. I'm surprised it took me this long to finally read it. It should be noted that, like Bubba Ho-Tep, I believe this is a novella, not a novel. 

Stepford Wives is a clever and frightening bit of satire. Like The Handmaid's Tale, I'm sure it's more horrifying for female readers than male, because it gets to the root of gender imbalance and how tenuous our current hold on things really is. How easy it would be to lose it all and become powerless again, controlled by the men in our lives. (If you'd like a good horror film that shows a bit of when this happened in real life in Iran, watch Under the Shadow on Netflix. Though there's a paranormal element, the real horror is the female main character having to adapt to living in a completely different world where she's become a second class citizen and can't even flee her home without a head covering on without being chided and threatened for it. It's chilling.)

The premise is technically absurd, but that's part of the satire. And Levin makes it convincing. He never goes into the nitty gritty details of how any of it's being done, but he doesn't need to.

 I expected the main character's husband to already be a sexist jerk at the beginning, but the thing is, he supports Joanna in her feminism, in her drive to fight the good fight. He supports the fact that she isn't a perfect homemaker, and that her photography career is worthwhile. And that's what makes it so hard to understand when the signs start pointing to him wanting a perfect Stepford-style wife, who does nothing but please her husband, clean the house, cook, and take care of the children. I actually found his turning to the dark side far harder to stomach than the concept of perfect wife-bots, but that's probably because the dread of having one's husband turn on them despite a seemingly good marriage plants seeds of doubt. It hurts to read, really. Just like The Handmaid's Tale.

This is a fairly light read, quick, witty, simple. But there's so much buried beneath the surface. Definitely a worthwhile read, even if you feel you already know the story.

My Top Ten: 

1. The Handmaid's Tale (Margaret Atwood)

2. The Girl Next Door (Jack Ketchum)

3. The Bottoms (Joe R. Lansdale)

4. Coraline (Neil Gaiman)

5. The Bridge (John Skipp and Craig Spector)

6. A Choir of Ill Children (Tom Piccirilli)

7. Needful Things (Stephen King)

8. 1Q84 (Haruki Murakami)

9. Those Who Hunt the Night (Barbara Hambly)

10. Rebecca (Daphne DuMaurier)

No idea what book on the list will be next.

Featured on Horror Addicts!

Instead of a post here today, I'm referring you over to HorrorAddicts.net, where I'm the featured author. There's a theatrical reading of a portion of my story The Blue Mist, the first story in Blue Sludge Blues & Other Abominations, by two talented actors!

Podcast with theatrical reading, podcast host Emerian Rich (theme: cursed animals): Click here

Narrator: H.E. Roulo

http://heatherroulo.com

Jim, the Prospector: Sean Young

https://www.facebook.com/sean.young.3990418

Accompanying interview by Naching T. Kassa: Click here

Such fun to have this done! I hope you enjoy.

May you find your Muse.

Horror List Book Review: Ghost Road Blues

I'm reading through three lists of best horror with two friends (DeAnna Knippling and M.B. Partlow), posting reviews as we go. (For more information, including a list of the books, see this post.)

This week I'm reviewing Ghost Road Blues, by Jonathan Maberry.

This is the first book in the Pine Deep trilogy. Unfortunately, there's no real resolution of story in the first book, which is frustrating, because it leaves everything hanging. What I like to see in a trilogy or series is a resolution of a significant plot arc at the end of the book, with other plot lines unresolved for the next book(s).

Maberry creates characters you can really like and characters you can really hate. The evilness of the bad guys is significant, with no real redeeming features. This struck me, because I was recently on a panel where a psychologist who had worked in a mental health facility looked out at the audience and said something along the lines of, "I envy those of you who think that bad people are merely evil." They were less scary to me when all these awful people were just pure evil and tied to the main plot. There wasn't a gray area with them.

I liked the character of Crow, our main good guy. And Mike, a kid whose POV we see through. The women are lackluster characters (you can keep telling me Val is a super strong woman, but when she spends most of her time crying, freaking out, and being rescued, you've just disproven that.) Up until she was put under duress, I liked Val. Even after that, I was still rooting for her, but I got frustrated with the character at times. She's smart, she's loyal, she's determined, and she's strong and capable, but when Crow's around, she loses that. She exists to be rescued by men in the story.

Something that bothered me was that the main "monster" is hidden from us in this first book. The supernatural is brought into the story early enough, but the something more being hinted at (we don't know for certain what it is, though a blurb on the next book gave it away--whoops) feels like it's coming in way too late in the storyline. There should have at least been seeds planted earlier.

However, having said all that, Maberry can really paint a scene. I became deeply embroiled in the setting. The pacing is also good, and the setup such that I want to see it all resolved. While this wasn't my favorite book, it drew me in and I didn't hate-read it.

My Top Ten remains the same.

My Top Ten: 

1. The Handmaid's Tale (Margaret Atwood)

2. The Girl Next Door (Jack Ketchum)

3. The Bottoms (Joe R. Lansdale)

4. Coraline (Neil Gaiman)

5. The Bridge (John Skipp and Craig Spector)

6. A Choir of Ill Children (Tom Piccirilli)

7. Needful Things (Stephen King)

8. 1Q84 (Haruki Murakami)

9. Those Who Hunt the Night (Barbara Hambly)

10. Rebecca (Daphne DuMaurier)

The next book I review will be Stepford Wives, by Ira Levin.

Existentialism and Horror Stories

I've got a guest today here at The Warrior Muse who was willing to approach horror fiction from a different angle. Please welcome Jason Dias, PsyD, a guy who's uniquely qualified to talk about the psychology behind enjoying horror.

I’m an existential psychologist. Among other things, that means I study the importance of our awareness of death to our mental health. Freud, because he lived in particularly sexually repressive times, imagined repressed sexuality to be at the heart of neurosis. Existential psychologists imagine repressed knowledge of death does the same thing.

Ernest Becker wrote a compelling treatise on the topic. In The Denial of Death, he makes a case that reminders of our mortality (death salience) damage our self-esteem. If everything you do will be dust soon, what use doing anything at all? Then, to repair our self-esteem, we join in-groups and necessarily create out-groups. Becker was trying to explain Nazis. He ended up explaining a lot of stuff that didn’t end with Paris Peace Treaties.

You’re right to be suspicious. Nobody should accept theories as facts without a bunch of data. Luckily, there is a wide and deep pool of data on the topic, experimental evidence showing that people exposed to death salience (for example, a picture of a graveyard) do indeed endorse more nationalism and racism on surveys. Check out this book, for example, full of experimental evidence, and only the tip of the iceberg: Handbook of Experimental Existential Psychology. 

Now what in the heck does any of that have to do with horror?

We all know death is everywhere. It’s on the news. It’s in the hospital we pass on our way to work. In the traffic report on the radio. We spend all day burying our fear of death. That fear attaches to other stuff. It causes problems. But we can go to the movies and watch a horror movie – and there engage with the fear of death in a controlled setting. We let the beast out of its cage for some exercise. Then the movie is over.

If it’s a good film, it lingers with us. We feel the dread… and we know why we feel the dread. The important part of Becker’s equation is repression: feeling dread without knowing why. You see the horror on the screen then take that unease with you for a while, and you can name it.

Even better is a good horror book. Short stories, novels, whatever. There you can sink into the experience of each character, build empathy for them, fear for them. Ideally, even understand the monster or the villain. Death becomes a little closer and a little less terrifying, because we can sit with it while nothing bad happens to us, and understand the experiences more deeply.

Me, I love to introduce ambiguity. Does the protagonist make it out alive and sane? Well, maybe. Because getting comfortable with ambiguity is a great treatment for fundamentalism of all types.

When I say fundamentalism, I mean starting with premises and working backwards through the evidence; this is as opposed to radical acceptance, which requires starting with the evidence and arriving at good-faith conclusions.

Writing horror is a public service. The horror writer engages with death. With horror, torment, disgust, terror, fear, angst, revulsion, ambiguity. We o it so those who are willing can join us in these spaces and come out of the covers or the movie house a little more ready to live in a world where death is a fact of life.

Jason Dias is a doctor of clinical psychology with fifteen years of experience working with developmentally disabled adults, four with people in severe states at the psychiatric hospital, and nine doing international psychology. He is co-founder of the Zhi Mian Institute for International Existential Psychology, an organization helping Chinese psychotherapists to acquire counseling skills and develop professional infrastructure.

Additionally, Jason writes. His credits include web journals and articles for The New Existentialists and A New Domain, two book chapters about existential psychology, a book of poetry and several novels and anthologies. He worries that academic writers spend too much time writing for journals only read by people who already agree with them and tries to get big ideas out in other formats.

Jason lives in Colorado Springs with his wife and son and keeps mostly to himself.

Thank you, Jason! Jason was my editor on the Necro-Om-Nom-Nom-Icon, and has several stories in it, as well. And I'll never argue with anyone who says writing horror is a public service. Rarely do I get assigned positive reasons for writing what I write...

Now for some links. Bear in mind I'm not endorsing these, merely passing them along. Always do your own due diligence before submitting.

Accepting Submissions:

Willow Press is seeking literary and genre fiction in one of the following themes: perfection, lust, or risk. 800 to 1000 words for flash, 4000 to 5000 words for short stories. Pays $10 to $30 CDN. Deadline August 12 (July 22 for theme of perfection).

Human Noise Journal is seeking short stories, poems, and essays. Up to 10 pages. Pays $30. Deadline August 15.

Zsenon Publishing is seeking stories for the A Punk Rock Future anthology. Up to 6000 words. Pays $.06/word. Deadline August 15.

What do you think about what Jason said? What does horror do for you? Do you find it a safe reprieve? Any of these links of interest? Anything to share?

May you find your Muse.

IWSG - Goals, The Horror Fiction Review, #IWSGPit, and Links

It's the first...wait, Tuesday? Yep, we're posting today for the Insecure Writer's Support Group, because tomorrow's the 4th of July. Typically, we post on the first Wednesday of the month, but we make an exception for the Fourth! IWSG is the brain child of Alex J. Cavanaugh, created to seek and gain support from fellow insecure writers. You can sign up by clicking on Alex's name and adding your blog to the list.

Quick note before we begin. If you didn't receive your IWSG newsletter this month, go HERE to sign up again. You may have been purged if you missed the GDPR message asking you to opt in. If you try to sign up and it says you're already signed up, shoot me an email so I can look into it. And if you've never signed up? Now's a great time! Click on "HERE" above and sign up. It only takes a few seconds!

Another note: #IWSGPit is July 19! Get your Twitter pitches ready. Over 1000 agents and publishers have been invited to watch the feed that day, and several authors found homes for their books in the January #IWSGPit!

The co-hosts this month are Nicki Elson, Juneta Key, Tamara Narayan, and Patricia Lynne!

The optional question is What are your ultimate writing goals, and how have they changed over time (if at all)?

I don't know if I have an ultimate writing goal. I have a series of smaller goals, like getting a story in a Best Horror of the Year collection and getting a novel traditionally published. Looking at big future goals both excites me and scares the crap out of me. I want to be a recognized author, but I also know I lose some of my freedom then. Plus, I have this perpetual fear of having too much attention.

Speaking of getting attention, Blue Sludge Blues & Other Abominations was reviewed on The Horror Fiction Review. Check it out!

Each month I review my submission stats for the previous month to keep myself accountable. Here are June's stats:

Short Stories

0 rejections

0 acceptances

3 submissions

1 invitation to submit

Currently on submission: 12, with 2 short listed

Novels

1 rejection

1 request for 50 pages

Currently out to: 2 agents

Now for some links. Bear in mind I'm not endorsing these, merely passing them along. Always do your own due diligence before submitting.

Accepting Submissions:

Body Parts Magazine is seeking horror in the theme of Aliens, Apocalypse, and Armageddon for their fall/winter edition. Up to 8000 words. Pays up to $20 for fiction. Deadline August 1.

The First Line is seeking flash fiction beginning with the following sentence: The window was open just enough to let in the cool night air. Up to 5000 words. Pays up to $50 for fiction. Deadline August 1.

Jolly Horror Press is seeking humorous horror stories for Don't Cry to Mama. It needs to be about something your mama may have told you not to do. Up to 6000 words. Pays $25. Deadline August 1.

Cemetery Dance Publications is seeking short horror and dark fiction for their magazine. Up to 5000 words. Pays $.05/word. Deadline July 5.

Flapperhouse is seeking surreal works. Up to 5000 words. Pays $.01/word. 

The Baffler is seeking humorous pieces. Pays a token amount.

What's your insecurity? Do you have long term goals you're willing to share? What are your submission stats for the month of June? Any of these links of interest? Anything to share?

May you find your Muse.

*Flourish One, Horizontal Clip Art by OCAL, clker.com