Halloween Blog Bash with Keith R.A. DeCandido
It's weird the way you find yourself becoming a horror writer.
For the longest time, I never thought of myself that way. When people ask me what I do for a living, I say I'm a writer, and if they ask what kind, I almost always say "science fiction & fantasy." I'm best known for my Star Trek novels and my Farscape comics, both of which are classic space operas.
And yet, I look at my bibliography, and there's quite a bit of horror there. Four of my five movie novelizations are of horror films-Darkness Falls and the first three Resident Evil flicks-and I've written a pair of novels and a novelization in the world of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and a trio of Supernatural novels.
That's ten horror novels in which lots of bad stuff happens. The RE films escalate from zombies overrunning an underground facility to zombies overrunning an entire city to a full-on zombie apocalypse with zombies overrunning every damn thing. Darkness Falls has a revenge-obsessed spirit of a woman who was wrongly hanged. My Buffy fiction has murderous bad guys ranging from a giant praying mantis to a mummy to people who want to resurrect Koschei the Deathless, not to mention a healthy dose of vampires. And Supernatural gave us another revenge-obsessed spirit of a woman wrongly killed (hey, there's a reason hell hath no fury…), the revenge-obsessed spirit of the Calusa tribe, the spirit of a wrongly killed Japanese ronin, and a whole lotta demons.
And yet, I didn't think of myself as a horror writer, even having written those ten novels.
Until I wrote one particular Star Trek novel. Yes, Star Trek.
I worked on a project called Myriad Universes, which were "what if" stories (or "elseworlds" stories, if you prefer DC metaphors to Marvel ones) in the Trek universe. These were chances to seriously upend the apple cart without having to worry about the consequences to an established universe.
And I went a little nuts.
In the sixth and seventh season of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, the Federation was at war with the Dominion, but while we were often told that the war was brutal and devastating, most of the worst damage happened off screen, in casualty reports and in people talking about people they knew who died, or mentions of familiar planets being conquered. With the exception of one character who lost a leg (easily replaced with Trek technology), none of the characters we cared about suffered any major consequences to the war.
I wanted to change that. So in A Gutted World I provided a much nastier war, a two-front war with the Dominion's activity completely behind the scenes. The characters who suffered and died were familiar ones. Throughout, we see the agony suffered by Jean-Luc Picard as he has to compromise so many of his principles in order to achieve victory.
The body count is impressive in A Gutted World-ending with an entire solar system going boom-and it's easily the darkest thing I've ever written. Even darker than the zombie apocalypse or super-charged spirits haunting Key West or a Japanese ronin's captured soul wreaking havoc on San Francisco.
Despite ten horror novels under my belt, it took a Star Trek story-not a franchise known for its horror elements, unless you want to count Jolene Blalock's implants-for me to think of myself as a horror writer.
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Keith R.A. DeCandido is the author of more than 40 novels, most in various media universes-besides the ones mentioned in the blog, there's also World of Warcraft, StarCraft, CSI: NY, Cars, Doctor Who, and bunches more. He writes the monthly Farscape comic book for BOOM! Studios, and his Dungeons & Dragons novel Under a Crimson Sun is due to be released in 2011. Find out less at his blog at kradical.livejournal.com or follow him on Facebook and/or Twitter under the handle of KRADeC.
For the longest time, I never thought of myself that way. When people ask me what I do for a living, I say I'm a writer, and if they ask what kind, I almost always say "science fiction & fantasy." I'm best known for my Star Trek novels and my Farscape comics, both of which are classic space operas.
And yet, I look at my bibliography, and there's quite a bit of horror there. Four of my five movie novelizations are of horror films-Darkness Falls and the first three Resident Evil flicks-and I've written a pair of novels and a novelization in the world of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and a trio of Supernatural novels.
That's ten horror novels in which lots of bad stuff happens. The RE films escalate from zombies overrunning an underground facility to zombies overrunning an entire city to a full-on zombie apocalypse with zombies overrunning every damn thing. Darkness Falls has a revenge-obsessed spirit of a woman who was wrongly hanged. My Buffy fiction has murderous bad guys ranging from a giant praying mantis to a mummy to people who want to resurrect Koschei the Deathless, not to mention a healthy dose of vampires. And Supernatural gave us another revenge-obsessed spirit of a woman wrongly killed (hey, there's a reason hell hath no fury…), the revenge-obsessed spirit of the Calusa tribe, the spirit of a wrongly killed Japanese ronin, and a whole lotta demons.
And yet, I didn't think of myself as a horror writer, even having written those ten novels.
Until I wrote one particular Star Trek novel. Yes, Star Trek.
I worked on a project called Myriad Universes, which were "what if" stories (or "elseworlds" stories, if you prefer DC metaphors to Marvel ones) in the Trek universe. These were chances to seriously upend the apple cart without having to worry about the consequences to an established universe.
And I went a little nuts.
In the sixth and seventh season of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, the Federation was at war with the Dominion, but while we were often told that the war was brutal and devastating, most of the worst damage happened off screen, in casualty reports and in people talking about people they knew who died, or mentions of familiar planets being conquered. With the exception of one character who lost a leg (easily replaced with Trek technology), none of the characters we cared about suffered any major consequences to the war.
I wanted to change that. So in A Gutted World I provided a much nastier war, a two-front war with the Dominion's activity completely behind the scenes. The characters who suffered and died were familiar ones. Throughout, we see the agony suffered by Jean-Luc Picard as he has to compromise so many of his principles in order to achieve victory.
The body count is impressive in A Gutted World-ending with an entire solar system going boom-and it's easily the darkest thing I've ever written. Even darker than the zombie apocalypse or super-charged spirits haunting Key West or a Japanese ronin's captured soul wreaking havoc on San Francisco.
Despite ten horror novels under my belt, it took a Star Trek story-not a franchise known for its horror elements, unless you want to count Jolene Blalock's implants-for me to think of myself as a horror writer.
______________________________
Keith R.A. DeCandido is the author of more than 40 novels, most in various media universes-besides the ones mentioned in the blog, there's also World of Warcraft, StarCraft, CSI: NY, Cars, Doctor Who, and bunches more. He writes the monthly Farscape comic book for BOOM! Studios, and his Dungeons & Dragons novel Under a Crimson Sun is due to be released in 2011. Find out less at his blog at kradical.livejournal.com or follow him on Facebook and/or Twitter under the handle of KRADeC.