I’m by no means an expert, nor can I point to a long or distinguished writing career to buttress my credibility. There are far wiser folks out there who have read more horror than I have who have read more fiction than I have, period. It’s important to note that everything I say should be taken with a grain of salt, too. I saw an interview once in which Stephen King said the highest compliment he could be paid would be that his fiction made someone late for work, or made them burn dinner, or fall behind on the laundry, simply because they couldn’t stop reading it. Fiction should provide us with some sort of temporary escape from our lives. However, they should also be fun, exciting, entertaining, and suspenseful. They should say something about the human condition. Stories should move us emotionally, they should make us ponder the world around us, our existence, and life in general. I’ve bounced a lot between the descriptions “fun and fast-paced” and “literate and full of substance.” The truth of the matter (as I’ve come to discover it) is this: good fiction and, even more importantly, a good reading diet, shouldn’t ever cater to one end of the spectrum exclusively. As I’ve written this series, I’ve found it necessary to achieve a tenuous balance in my recommendations and recountings of the horror which has impacted me as a reader and writer.
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