Shades of Evil - With Guest Authors Jenny Twist and Tara Fox Hall

Jenny Twist

Tara Fox Hall

Although I don't write horror, I do enjoy introducing a little wickedness into my stories when appropriate. Why should creating evil characters be more fascinating than creating good ones? I'm not entirely sure, but they are. My ears pricked up, therefore, at a debate on the subject of evil between two author friends whose excellent work fills me with admiration, and I persuaded them to 'go public' and air their views on my blog.

These two great authors are Jenny Twist and Tara Fox Hall, who often collaborate on chilling horror anthologies, as well as writing individual longer works - and I've never yet been disappointed by any of these.

Tara said that what sparked the debate was a review by a U.S. college professor [Gregory Alles] of Robert Ellwood's book: Tales of Darkness: The Mythology of Evil, that claimed:  “We learn more about evil and how to deal with it from stories than we do from philosophical analysis…life [itself] is…a set of stories.” This had Tara pondering what, if this is true, does the recent shift in fiction toward making the usual villain of the story into its hero do to our society? Should we be worried that the perceived line between evil and good is not just blurring, but disappearing?

Jenny Twist's response to this is:

See No Evil?

In recent years there seems to have been a worrying shift in people’s attitude to evil. We try to empathise with mass murderers, child abusers, serial killers. We look for reasons. They had a difficult childhood. Perhaps they were themselves abused. They have never been loved. They were dominated by a sadistic lover.
Well, it doesn’t wash with me. It’s irrelevant why they do these evil deeds. They have to be stopped. They have to be caught and locked up and never let out again.

Lesley Ann Downey

And don’t talk to me about rehabilitation. Talk to the mother of Lesley Ann Downey, whose ten year old daughter was tortured to death by the notorious Moors Murderers. (Just to prove they really were evil and not just misunderstood, they recorded her screams so they could play it back later for pleasure.) Talk to the families of the 909 people who died in Jonestown. See if they think rehabilitation is a good idea. Or maybe we should think about releasing Charles Manson. He’s been in prison a long time and he’s probably sorry by now.

Let’s not acknowledge that there is evil in the world. Let’s pretend it can all be put right.

Ian Brady

Myra Hindley

Charles Manson

This same downplaying of evil seems to be seeping insidiously into vampire literature. Vampires have become poor, misunderstood creatures who are only trying to earn a crust – or, in their case, a bucket of human blood. It is not, after all, their fault that they are vampires. They were the victims once.

And so now we have sexy vampires who are tender lovers. We have vampires with human emotions; vampires who are co-operating with humans and making a living in the world. We even have, God help us, sparkly vampires.
Don’t make me laugh. Vampires are parasites, feeding on human beings. They are serial killers. It doesn’t matter what they were before or if they were victims themselves. They are vampires now and nobody in their right mind would want one for a lover.
Real, believable vampires should be evil - properly evil. Not this namby-pamby evil which can be explained away and forgiven, but deep-down, black to the soul evil.
My absolute favourite vampire of all time is Kurt Barlow in Stephen King’s ‘Salem’s Lot’. He is ancient, clever, devious . . . and evil to the core. Someone you can really enjoy hating. That’s my kind of vampire.

I hope you'll return next week to hear Tara's response to Jenny's post.

More about author Jenny Twist:

Jenny Twist left school at fifteen and went to work in an asbestos factory. After working in various jobs, including bacon-packer and an escapologist’s assistant, she returned to full-time education and did a BA in history at Manchester and post-graduate studies at Oxford. 
In 2001 she and her husband moved to Southern Spain where they live with their rather eccentric dog and cat.
Jenny's published works include: Take One At Bedtime, Domingo's Angel, The Mantequero series, Bedtime Shadows (with Tara Fox Hall) and dozens of short stories.

Three Writers, One Genre - Horror! (Part One)



Like everyone else, I've been getting myself in the mood for Halloween this month by reading horror stories from three of my favourite modern writers in the genre: Jenny Twist, Su Halfwerk and Tara Fox-Hall  As always when I read, I want to ask the writers questions and so I thought, why not?  To help celebrate Halloween, therefore, I invited these three extremely talented writers round for a scary night in and I thought I would share some the highlights with you over my next few blog posts.

 

I feel I should almost say, four writers, because all three of them mentioned one specific writer whose work they enjoy or feel inspired by and he seemed to be very much present in spirit.  Of course I'm referring to the great Stephen King.  (I did try phoning him, but he was busy, busy, busy - the time of year, I expect). Unlike their hero, however, my three writers prefer the short story genre, seeing it as an art-form in itself. 

"There is something exquisite about the perfectly constructed horror story," says Jenny.  "They can deliver a timely surprise or twist realistically without dragging it over hundreds of pages," Su explains.  "The longer the story, the easier to figure out its ending and/or the faster a reader is fed up with it."  Showing her practical side, Tara adds: "Short stories are quick to write. I can finish one, if properly inspired, in a day or so. These are also usually relatively easy to place with a publisher, compared with a novel, because so many places publish short horror fiction."




Tara Fox Hall

But what made them choose to write horror in the first place?  Tara explained that she suffers from nightmares (well, maybe that's all those horror stories you read, Tara?) and the process of writing scenes from these is cathartic.  Our irrepressible joker then adds: " I also enjoy scaring people, and since locking peers in the basement is no longer effective—and has only an immediate reach—I had to graduate to more sophisticated ways, like fiction."  Su, who will be my guest on this blog on Halloween Day to talk about her thrilling (and believe me it is!) collection entitled Hellbound, plans to make us all wait until then to divulge her reasons while Jenny simply fell in love with the genre after devouring the stories of M. R. James and the entire Pan Book of Horror series at a young age.

When I asked them about scary moments in their own lives, Jenny recounted a toe-curling experience of living in an isolated Oxfordshire farmhouse that should have auditioned for the 'Amytiville Horror' movie.  "Horrible things happened to us in that house," she told us, "and we used to fantasise about previous tenants committing murders to explain the awful atmosphere of the place.



Jenny Twist

 One night there was a dreadful storm. The wind shrieked around the house like a woman screaming. The doors and windows rattled as if something was trying to get in. And the big picture window in the kitchen bowed in and out, distorting the reflection of the room. We were afraid it would break (and let in the nightmare creatures outside?) so we hoisted the kitchen table in front of it, hoping it would hold it in place. Then we sat in the living room, clutching each other in terror as things stalked the night outside."

Of course it was only a storm. Wasn’t it? Wasn’t it?  The jury's still out on that one, Jenny…

Su Halfwerk

Su on the other hand told us the story of losing her five year old in a busy shopping mall for a full ten minutes.  Now that's a real life horror story every parent in the world knows and tries to avoid.  Just remembering back to losing track of my two year old in IKEA many years ago has made my hair stand on end.  Seeing this, Tara takes pity on me and decides I've had enough scary stories for one evening.

She's probably right.  I do hope you'll join me on Sunday for the next instalment, which will include the scariest excerpts from their own scary stories as chosen by them.  If you like horror, you won't want to miss it.  Take my spooky word for it!