Mar 20, 2007 23:55
...that if you want to read some truly blood-curdling, chilling, insert-cliche-here soul-wrenching horror fiction, you can't really go wrong with James Herbert. Most Americans don't know about him, but in Britain, he is treated with wary admiration, like a dog that has bitten enough children to qualify as dangerous.
Yeah, he's like that. Dangerous.
He's best known for his unflinching descriptions of graphic violence, murder and sex, particularly in his earlier works like The Rats and The Fog, where no body extremity is safe from an appalling depiction of its savaging. Herbert has been lauded as "the godfather of splatterpunk," and I have to give the man his due and say he was indeed a big influence on the early part of my own (thus far embyonic) writing career. He taught me to not be afraid of mayhem, to take up the banner of scream bloody gore, and to never neglect the ladies... after all, what's a novel about savage, intelligent three-foot-long rats with horribly advanced intelligence without a nice, wet fuck scene right in the middle of the book, courtesy of Lair? I'll tell you what it is... it's... it's, um...
It's horror that makes me cringe my seat, is what.
He doesn't get enough run and I'm here to put him over tonight, so what about you, my devoted peeps? Who is the writer beyond the obvious choices (i.e. King, Koontz, the usual suspects) that really makes your flesh creep in the middle of the night, and why?
random update,
writing