Why is there a stigma about writing horror?

Fifteen years ago when I published my first short story, The Woman and the Stiff, in an online magazine called Blood Moon Rising, I remember the reaction of one of my colleagues. She said, “Oh, I didn’t know you write horror? Remind me not to get on your wrong side!” It was a joke with a jag, of course, and we both laughed awkwardly. Was she implying that I had skeletons in my closet – maybe literally? The story itself is one of dark humour about a man who gets murdered by hoodlum teens and reappears as a zombie to warn of the dangers of road rage. If you’re interested, it has since been republished in my collection of strange and macabre short stories, Diabolical Dreamscapes.

Just because I write horror doesn’t mean I’m a serial killer, or that I live in a Gothic castle full of spiders, bats and ghosts rattling chains as they walk the halls. Actually, maybe I need to get onto a property website and rectify that second point (lol). Just joking. In reality, I suppose I’m a fairly ordinary, average person.

Why are there misconceptions about horror authors? Why does society assume we’re a maladjusted breed? More often than not, my chosen genre will cause an involuntary shiver once folks start asking about what I write. I looked around at other articles on the topic after a cursory search and it seems other horror authors have been subjected to the same stigma, regarding their writing, as I have.

My educated guess is that people probably assume that if an author can have such a dark imagination that it must mean they have experienced such things themselves and are writing about something that is true to the horror author’s life. Well, for those readers out there, come closer and I’ll tell you a little secret about how horror authors know such dark and macabre topics…

Are you ready for it?

It’s called – you guessed it – an overactive imagination.

Yep, I am one of those horror authors who is guilty of having an overactive imagination. My imagination is fueled by ‘what ifs’. I consider myself lucky enough to be able to channel those ideas into stories.

Hurray for imagination!