By Harry Markov
I find it rather ironic that the genre responsible for perhaps the quickest and strongest of emotions turns out to be a horror to work with. Though, before I dig in the fresh soil of my scrambled mind, I’d like to thank you for joining the Tales to Terrify, Volume One blog tour. I won’t be discussing the origins of horror, what sort of an animal it is, or where it’s headed. That would be très boring and you deserve better.
Let’s get to the blood, meats, bones, and gore. Horror readers know loving horror is much like playing a very-time-consuming game of Russian roulette. You can’t possibly anticipate which story will elicit the strongest scare. Sometimes, you find the perfect story to keep you awake way into the night. Other times, you flip through the pages, bored out of your mind. Horror is even more subjective than the other genres, as it taps into the endless pastiche of human phobias and feeds them (Okay, so I broke my promise about not talking about what horror is, but, be patient, I do have a point) nightmare fuel and daytime TV reruns. But, as luck would have it, some phobias stick, some phobias flop, and that’s the horror of horror.
I’m a butcher, patissier and clairvoyant employed in a blood-soaked murder kitchen from Hell. My task is to craft the juiciest, glazing-heavy wedding cake of horror with no recipe, because, quite conveniently, a recipe doesn’t exist, will not exist (Lovecraft should have featured one in the Necronomicon). That’s the horror of horror – the desire to scare every single soul when knowing that’s not quite achievable.
In Tales to Terrify, Volume One, Lawrence Santoro, Tony Smith, and I have dug deep into our fears to search the stories that scare us. We have searched for horror that comes from different places, because horror feeds on diversity. That’s the key motif in our eclectic anthology – give the gift of chills to every type of horror aficionado.
Now that the anthology has been assembled and is ready for our readers, the horror of horror seems to be waiting for readers’ reactions. Never a dull moment with the genre.
GAME: You can be one of the lucky ten people to win a PDF copy of our anthology. All you have to do is find us on Facebook or Twitter (@TalestoTerrify) and answer the following question: What scares you most? The most creative responses will receive the coveted PDF copy and will be featured in our first November show.
The game will end on October 31st, our official launch date. A like and a follow will be appreciated, but are not a prerequisite to enter the competition.
You can follow the blog tour on the following dates and sites:
- October, 22nd: Innsmouth Free Press
- October, 23rd: Dark Wolf’s Fantasy Reviews
- October, 24th: Kaaron Warren
- October, 25th: Sci fi & Fantasy Lovin’ News and Reviews
- October, 26th: Fantasy Book Critic
- October, 29th: Wag the Fox
- October, 30th: Angela Slatter
- October, 31st: Graeme’s Fantasy Book Review
Bio: Harry Markov is a writer, reviewer, columnist and as of recently an editor. Generally off- kilter, but most pleasant, you can find Markov sitting somewhere with fingers on some sort of keyboard. At the moment he’s finishing a Masters in Advertising and Media Communications and working as an SEO expert in a small firm in Varna, Bulgaria.
You can find Markov’s short fiction in The World SF Blog, Pandemonium: Fire and the upcoming Arcane Anthology volume 2. He has made his editorial debut as the assistant editor for Bryan Thomas Schmidt’s anthology SPACE BATTLES: Full Throttle Space Tales #6.
His irregular blogging can be found on Through a Forest of Ideas (http://throughaforestofideas.blogspot.com/) and he’s available on Twitter at @HarryMarkov.
very god stuff